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ALONG THE ROAD 



By 

ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON 
Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge 



Delayed it may he for more lives yet, 

Through worlds I shall traverse, not a few I 



0. p. PUTNAH'S SONS 

NEW YORK AND LONDON 
^be fcnicfterbocfter press 

1913 



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Copyright, 1913 

BY 

ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON 



tCbe •ftnfcfterboclier Orese. "ftew TQotk 



©CI.A332559 



PREFACE 

I THINK it is often a pity to collect and repub- 
lish contributions to periodical literature, and 
authors are apt to feel too tenderly, with a sort 
of fatherly regard, about the little crops of their 
own minds. Articles written for journals are apt, 
of course, to be topical and occasional thiiigs, 
composed very often, by the necessity of the 
case, rapidly and hurriedly, on some momentary 
subject. They are then little more than impro- 
visations, spun out of impromptu materials, and 
there has been no time for them to take shape in 
the writer's mind. 

But this does not apply to all such writing, 
and I can honestly say that it does not apply to 
the majority of the little essays which I have 
contributed week by week to the Church Family 
yeu'spaper, under the heading of Along the Road, 
I have for a long time had a good many articles 
in stock, and even in proof, so that I have not 
written from hand to mouth. The majority of 
them are simply little essays, composed delib- 
erately and carefully on subjects which occupied 
my mind; and I have had so many letters from 
unknown correspondents about these articles, that 

>iii 



iv Preface 

I think that some of my readers may like to have 
a selection of them in a more permanent form. 
I have omitted all articles which have been writ- 
ten to order on some topic of the day, and all 
of a purely controversial type, such as I have had 
from time to time to write, not very willingly; 
and all those which have aroused, however unin- 
tentionally, the susceptibilities of readers. I be- 
gan to write the series in a time of considerable 
depression, when I was recovering from a long 
illness, and when I was afraid that I might be 
unequal to the task of regular composition ; and 
though I tried to write cheerfully, the shadow of 
ill-health fell over some of the earlier ones — and 
these I have omitted. 

Let me say shortly what I have been aiming at 
in the entire series. It seems to me that what we 
Englishmen often suffer from is a want of interest 
in ideas. I think that as a race we have some 
very fine qualities, — a sturd^^ and kindly common- 
sense, first of all, which permits us to view things 
justly and reasonably, and keeps us both from 
undue excitement and unbalanced depression. T 
believe that we are peaceable, orderly, and la- 
borious; and we have a real modesty, which 
prevents us from dwelling too much on our 
achievements and performances, and disposes us 
not to be careful to claim credit for what we do. 
And I think, too, that Ave try to live by principle 
rather than impulsively. 

But, on the other hand, we are conventional and 



Preface v 

uniDtelligent, and think far too much of wealth 
and position; we are averse to analysis and 
speculation and experiments. We take certain 
rather doubtful things for granted, and dislike 
originality and enthusiasm. It seems to me that 
we do not think enough about our daily life, and 
do not ask ourselves enough why we believe 
things, or even if we do really believe them. In 
moral matters we are really rather fatalistic, we 
trust instinct more than reason, and do not suf- 
ficiently regard the power we have, within certain 
limits, to change ourselves. We are apt to make 
up our minds about many matters early in life, 
and we take a foolish pride in what we call con- 
sistency, which often means little more than a 
habit of rejecting all arguments and all evidence 
which tell against our prejudices. We have, in 
fact, very little flexibility of mind. Again, I 
think that we are apt to neglect the wonderful 
treasure of ancient and beautiful associations 
which have accumulated in a land that has for 
so long been uninvaded, and where we have con- 
sequently been able to develop our own institu- 
tions without interruption. I am often amazed, 
as I explore England, to find hamlet after hamlet 
with a fine church, an old manorial house, many 
graceful dwellings, and obviously with a clear and 
delicate history of its own, if only it were re- 
corded ! All that we are apt to take as a matter 
of course, and neglect in a dull and careless way, 
as if it were not worth notice. 



vi Preface 

So I have had these two aims very firmly in 
view — to try in the first place to interest readers 
in little problems of life and character, all the 
clash and interplay of human qualities, so fresh, 
so unaccountable, so marvellously interesting, 
which spring out of our daily relations with other 
human beings. The longer I live, the more won- 
derful every day appears to me the infinite com- 
plexity and beauty of human intercourse, and the 
sense that some very great and noble problem is 
being worked out by slow gradations and with 
infinite delay. Civilisation has this potent effect, 
that it does away with isolation and hostility; 
it makes men and women feel that they cannot 
guard themselves apart from others, or follow 
selfishh^ their own designs, but that we are all 
deeply dependent on each other both for en- 
couragement and help; that our smallest actions 
and our lightest thoughts can and must affect 
other lives, and that good and evil alike must 
go on seeding and flowering, till we are perfect 
in patience and in love; and I have been struck, 
too, the more I have known of men, to find how 
often they are conscious, in a dim and uncertain 
way, of high and beautiful ideals, which they 
yet seem pathetically unable to work out, in- 
capable of ap])lying to the facts of life, though 
sorrow^fully aware that they are not making the 
best either of life or of themselves. This has 
given me increasingly the sense of a very wonder- 
ful and far-off future for mankind, — for all that 



Preface vii 

live and strive, hope and sorrow, — not only upon 
earth, but beyond the veil of mortality. That 
future, I believe with all my soul, is a future of 
joy, because joy is the native air of the spirit, 
which cannot acquiesce in sorrow and pain, 
though it can bear them, if it believes that they 
are meant ultimately to minister to joy and 
peace. The more that we study ourselves and 
others, the more rich and complex does the pos- 
sibility appear; and the more that we can keep 
our hearts on the permanent and the spiritual, 
and put what is temporary and material in its 
right place, the better for us. The world seems 
often full of misdirected feeling, grief, and dis- 
appointment over things which are not worth the 
emotion, bitter strife over paltry causes, stubborn 
prejudices, and worst of all a harsh belief that 
if people will not try to be happy in what we 
happen to consider the right way, they had better 
not be happy at all. That is in my belief the 
worst fault of the English character, the hard 
insistence on our own fancies and theories, the 
radical lack of sympathy and mutual understand- 
ing; so I have tried my hand at attempting to 
explain men and women to themselves and others, 
and fjressing on my readers, as far as I could, the 
supreme worth of conciliation, appreciation, toler- 
ance, and brotherly love. If I could but say or 
express how infinitely I desire that! I do not 
at all recommend a weak abandonment of our 
own cherished beliefs; but it is possible to hold 



viii Preface 

a view firmly and courageously, as the best for 
oneself, without attempting to contemn and dis- 
credit the sincere beliefs of others. 

And secondly, I have tried to awaken the in- 
terest, which we can find, if we only look for it, 
in common and ordinary things, in the places we 
see, in the words which we hear read week by 
week, in the simple experiences of life. One of 
the worst foes of all spiritual and mental energ}^ 
is the dulness that creeps over hard-working peo- 
ple, the stolid comfortable acquiescence in daily 
grubbiness, the ai)athy which sees the beautiful 
lights of life going out one by one without an 
attempt to rekindle tliem. One sees and hears 
things so dully and incuriously; and yet if one 
sets oneself to say " What does that mean? What 
lies behind that? How does it come to exist so? " 
we find a whole wealth of striking and tender 
associations, reaching far back into the past, and 
all most gently bound up with what we are. 

Ideas and associations ! Those are the best and 
dearest part of life, next to human relations. And 
they are not outside of our reach. We only, many 
of us, require to be taught how to begin, what 
sort of questions to ask ourselves, what little ex- 
periments in thought and feeling we can try. 
That has been the simple task I have set before 
me, and no one can wish more heartily than I 
do, that it had been better fulfilled. Because, as 
T have said. T am daily more amazed and de- 
lighted at the wonderful and incommunicable in- 



Preface ix 

terest and beauty of life, the secrets that it holds, 
the problems — some of them sad enough — that it 
offers, and the marvellous hope in the mighty 
purposes of God that lie behind it all. The 
House of Life in which we abide, in the da3's 
of our pilgrimage, can be made, with so little care 
and trouble, into a great and gracious place; as 
the old wise writer said, " Through wisdom is an 
house builded, and by understanding it is estab- 
lished, and by knowledge shall the chambers be 
filled with all precious and pleasant riches!" 

A. C. B. 



The Old Lodge, 

Magdalene College, Cambridge, 

Aug. 5, 1912. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Old England 1 

An Autumn Landscape 9 

St. Govan's 17 

A Ruined House 23 

St. Anthony-in-the-Fells 29 

Antiquities and Amenities 34 

Addington 42 

Brent Knoll 50 

Mr. Gladstone 56 

Robert Browning 65 

Newman 72 

Archippus 82 

Keats 90 

Roddy 96 

The Face of Death 101 

The Aweto 109 

The Old Family Nurse 115 

The Anglican Clergy 124 

xi 



xii Contents 

PAGE 

Compulsory Greek 133 

Gambling 140 

Hymns 147 

Preachers and Preaching 156 

Art and Life 162 

Sympathy 172 

Jealousy 179 

Home Truths 188 

Superstition 195 

Letter-Writing 204 

Vulgarity 213 

Sincerity 221 

Resolutions 229 

Biography 235 

Gossip 243 

Tactfulness 248 

On Finding One's Level 252 

The Inner Life 259 

On Being Shocked 269 

Homely Beauty 276 

Brain Waves 285 

Forgiveness 292 

Self-Pity 300 



Contents xiii 

PAGE 

Bells 309 

Starlings 315 

Mottoes 323 

On Being Interrupted 380 

Democracy ........ 338 

Absent-Mindedness 345 

Peace 352 

Conversation 359 

Work and Play 367 

Liveliness 373 

Pride 380 

Allegories 387 

Publicity and Privacy 394 

Experience 402 

Resignation 410 

The Wind 417 

The Use of Poetry 423 

War 430 

On Making Friends 439 

The Younger Generation 446 

Reading 455 



Along the Road 



OLD ENGLAND 

We hear much said nowadays about the Empire, 
and said wisely and bravely, too ; and we are told 
to hold out hands of brotherhood, and to keep 
our hearts warm towards our unknown friends 
and fellow-citizens over the sea, and to be proud 
of the great outward-beating wave of English life 
and talk and thought which surges over the globe. 
And, indeed, England may well rejoice in the 
old blessing of the Psalms that she is truly a 
joyful mother of children; though I sometimes 
wish that it were all done and said a little less 
militantly, and that the happy family would think 
and talk a little less of crowding out and keeping 
in their corners the other children who have their 
playground here, too, by the far-off purpose of 
God. 

But while we may wholesomely exult in the 
generous pulse of English blood which thrills far 
and wide through the earth, replenishing and 



Along the Road 



subduing it, we may sometimes wiselj^ turn our 
thoughts homewards and inwards and backwards, 
to the wonderful currents of history and tradition 
that have moulded our island race and made us 
what we are. We are apt to forget, we town- 
dwellers, what an incomparable treasure of old 
and beautiful things is hidden in our land, in 
village and hamlet, in the forest clearings, and 
the remote valleys and the foldings of the hills. 
If one explores a bit of quiet England, and finds 
leisure to look about for ruined castles and 
priories, for old houses and nestling churches, 
one comes to realise what long, quiet spaces of 
homely life have been lived century by century, 
in days before railways tied town to town, and 
before the humblest labourer could read day by 
day, as he can now in the newspaper, the whole 
pageant of the life which the world has been 
living the day before. 

It is a mistake perhaps to live too much in 
the jjast; one invests it all in the mind with a 
romantic, golden haze; one forgets its miseries 
and its cruelties, and one comes to sorrow feebly 
over the ills about one, as though they were newly- 
risen and fresh-engendered evils ; as if the old 
days were all full of peace and quiet and whole- 
some labour; when, as a matter of fact, the con- 
ditions of life for the mass of the population are 
infinitely brighter, more decent, more sensible, 
more comfortable than they \ised to be, and the 
minds of far more men are bent on helping and 



Old England 



cleansing and lifting up the souls and bodies of 
those who have fallen by the wayside, and find 
the great wheels of life running too tyrannously 
past them. 

But the old life had a beauty and a stillness 
of its own, for all that, when there was less 
motion and stir, less sound and foam; there was 
less arranging how to live, and more acceptance 
of life. Men whose range was more limited, con- 
centrated, no doubt, a stronger emotion on just 
the touches of grandeur and dignity and beauty 
that the circle of the hills enfolded ; and the sight, 
as one sees it, if one wanders afield day by day, 
of the beautiful churches and manor-houses, even 
of the very cottages and barns, gives the feeling 
that men in the old days had a stronger sense 
of the fine simplicities and even statelinesses of 
life, when they built with roof-tile and gable, with 
mullion and timber-tie, than w^hen they bring 
slate and yellow brick in a straw-packed truck, 
and run up a corrugated iron barn in the corner 
of the high-walled byre. 

Here is a little picture of what I saw one day 
not long ago, as I traced the green valley of the 
Windrush through the bare Cotswold hills. The 
Windrush is as sweet a stream as its airy, ruffled 
name suggests, full of clear pools and swift wind- 
ings, with its long, swaying weeds, and bubbling 
weirs, as it runs among level meadows, between 
bare hillsides. 

Over the fields we saw a tiny belfried church, 



Along the Road 



in a wide meadow; a little path led to it; and 
w^hen we were close at hand we could see that 
it had a minute ancient chancel, of singularl^^ 
rude masonry, and a small Tudor nave tacked 
on at a curious angle. Inside it was one of 
the homeliest of sanctuaries, with its irregular 
Georgian pews, faint traces of rusty frescoes, a 
pretty Jacobean pulpit, and a poppyhead or two 
of gnarled oak. But what a vista of age was 
opened out, when one found the chancel to be 
paved in places with a Roman mosaic, the bound- 
ing lines of which ran close to the walls, and 
left no sort of doubt that the chancel, even in 
its very walls, were the remnants of the hall of 
some Roman manor-house, converted, when dere- 
lict, into the simplest of Norman chapels. It was 
no doubt the home of some Roman settlers, and 
clearly inhabited for several generations; pro- 
bably not even fortified, so full are these valleys 
of great wealthy Roman houses, with cloister and 
colonnade and bath and hall, all testifying to a 
quiet colonial life in a peaceful land. What a 
mystery hangs over it all! These great country 
houses, no doubt, were one by one evacuated, as 
the Roman legions w^ere withdrawn, to crumble 
down into decay among brushwood and gorse. 
And then came the slow growth of kingdoms, and 
the spread of the Faith, till the old ruin among 
the thickets was repaired into a tiny Christian 
church, who knows by what hands, or how many 
dim years ago! 



Old England 5 

Then we sauntered on, and presently came to 
broad turfed terraces, in a pasture, with some 
odd square pools below them, and so to a small 
hamlet with a little church and a gabled manor- 
house. The church was full of great monuments, 
cavaliers, and knights, with kirtled spouses, lying 
stiffly, their hands beneath their heads, their 
ruddy painted faces, and their eyes looking tran- 
quilly out into the church. There were brasses, 
too, on the pavement, and later, more pompous 
monuments, with weeping cherubs, and inscrip- 
tions in flowing polysyllables, telling one of 
nothing that one cared to know, except of the 
eminent virtues which grief seems always to take 
for granted. 

The history of some great house was evidently 
hidden here; the name of the family was Fetti- 
place. When I got back home, I looked it up, 
and the strangest story was revealed. The Fetti- 
places were an ancient stock which grew slowly, 
by inheritance and alliance, into extraordinary 
wealth and station. They had land in sixteen 
counties, and one of the heads of the family 
actually married a Braganza, a daughter of a 
King of Portugal. The family, for all its influ- 
ence, never gave a single statesman or judge or 
bishop or admiral or general to England. They 
had no record of public service, only of great 
and growing prosperity. Then they began to 
dwindle ; the baronetcy became extinct, the name 
was still kept up in the female line, and then 



6 Along the Road 

the great house went out in the snuff ; ugly stories 
were told of them; they became imbecile and 
drunken, and at last the family became wholly 
extinct. The great house, which had stood, with 
its facade and cupolas, among the terraces we 
had seen in the pasture, was pulled down, the 
lands were sold, and the whole became a proud 
and selfish and wicked memory of great oppor- 
tunities thrown away, and vast revenues lavishly 
squandered. 

That seems to me a very sad and dreary old 
story — the fall of a great house! One does not 
want to be too solemn over it, but it is a sinister 
warning enough that one had better not build 
too much on the brave shows of life, pomp, and 
property and house and influence ; that the world 
is not a place where it is well to scramble for 
one's satisfaction, and waste what one cannot 
use; and that it may be better after all to give 
than to receive, though we most of us seem to 
hold the contrary. 

It did somehow seem to me that day, among 
those high-piled, much-escutcheoned monuments, 
that we many of us do pursue shadows ; that the 
treasures of life are wholesome work and deej) 
affections, and the simple things that amuse and 
occupy and uplift. Yet we pass over these things, 
many of us, as commonplace and humdrum, and 
set our minds on some silly ambition, some paltry 
fame, some trivial distinction, and forget that the 
true life is streaming past unheeded. 



Old England 7 

Is this all a very threadbare philosophy? I do 
not know. I can only say, very humbly, that it 
has taken me fifty years of varied and interesting 
life to perceive it, to sort the gold from the dross; 
to see how I have wasted my days in the excited 
pursuit of shadows, and often despised the sweet, 
simple, enriching, increasing things that lay all 
about me, like the daisies on a green pasture. 

I could not, in the presence of those stiff 
knights and dainty ladies, in their arched and 
emblemed niches, feel that we had got hold of 
the right proportions of life. Perhaps the Fetti- 
places, for all their estates and grandeurs and 
eminent virtues, did live simple lives amidst it 
all, loving the pure air that blew over the spare 
hillsides, and the clear stream that gushed be- 
neath their gardens, with their jolly boys and 
girls growing up about them. Yet something 
more ought to have come out of it all; some 
sharing of good things, some example of neigh- 
bourly life, some love and sympathy for poorer 
brethren. One does not like to feel that these 
virtues have been developed — for they have much 
increased of late — out of pure terror at the rising 
forces of democracy. It all ought to have grown 
\\]) spontaneously, and to have been generously 
conceded; and I doubt if it was. 

Indeed, if further proof were needed of some- 
thing vile and ugly in the old life of that still 
countryside, I saw a day or two later, hardly a 
mile from the Fettiplace monuments, a solitary 



8 Along the Road 

oak, standing far away from the coverts, with a 
rough old path leading to it across the fields. 
On the trunk, beneath a great horizontal out- 
thrusting bough, were some initials scarred deep 
into the wood, with a date more than a century 
old. The gibbet tree! The initials are those of 
two unhappy men, highway robbers, I think, 
whose jnouldering bodies must have dangled there, 
knocking in an ugly fashion against the tree, as 
the wind blew over the wood, with what horrors 
of scent and corruption ! One thinks of the dread- 
ful group gathered there ; the desperate man, with 
the rope round his neck thrown over the bough; 
the officers, the sheriff, the magistrates on horse- 
back, the staring crowd ; and then the struggling 
breath, the inflated eyes, the convulsed limbs. 
One must not put all that out of sight, as one 
dreams over the honest, quiet, simple days of old ! 
And what can we make of it all, the grass- 
grown terraces, the Roman pavement, the solitary 
tree — difficult pieces of a strange puzzle, to be 
fitted together ? One thing, to my mind, emerges, 
that one must not judge harshly, or hope hastily, 
or believe tamely, or dream comfortably, but try 
to see life whole, to face its harshnesses and its 
horrors, and yet to hold very firmly to a vast 
scheme, working itself out, with marvellous 
patience and exactness, nothing wasted, nothing 
slurred over, and all in the Mind and Heart of 
God. 



AN AUTUMN LANDSCAPE 

I WAS walking the other day with a friend at 
Cambridge along the road that runs up Mad- 
ingley Hill. In most countries this would be 
accounted a trifling undulation, but here in Cam- 
bridgeshire it is a bold and conspicuous eminence, 
commanding a wide view of the world. Beyond 
the groves of Girton, far to the north, we could 
see the dim towers of Ely, not unlike a gigantic 
locomotive, across the great Fen, with its rich 
blues and greens, all mellowed and refined by the 
thin autumnal mist; the pale fallows, the large 
pastures sloped away pleasantly from our feet, 
with here and there a row of elms, or a yellow- 
ing spinney. We halted at a gate by the edge of 
the wood, and my friend said to me, " I wonder 
what it is that makes all this so beautiful. There 
is nothing wild or romantic about it; it has no 
features; every acre has its simple use; it has all 
been tamed and tilled. It would be hard to ex- 
plain to any one what it is that is beautiful about 
it; and yet I can fancy that if one were com- 
pelled to live abroad, in a place as beautiful as 
Florence, or even in some tropical landscape, one 

9 



lo Along the Road 

would revert in tlioiigbt aud even with a sort of 
passionate lougiug to these level pastures and 
tame woods, as to something almost inexpressibly 
dear and delightful." 

"Yes," I said, "I can well imagine it; but 
would not that be partly just the sense of home 
and familiar things, a countryside peopled with 
men whose talk one could understand, and with 
birds and plants whose habits and forms one 
knew — a sort of revolt against things splendid 
and striking, which had yet no happy and mov- 
ing associations? So much of the beauty of 
things, as well as of places, depends upon the 
happy mind one carried about among them long 
ago, when one read one's own inner delight into 
tree and wall. I am sure that I love the elm 
because of the playing-fields at Eton! The very 
word elm calls up the look of the great trees, 
witli all their towering foliage, on a summer even- 
ing beside the Thames, or the sight of them seen 
through the open windows of a schoolroom in a 
spring morning — ' the times,' as Tennyson said, 

* When I remember to have been 
Joyful and free from blame.* 

We can't isolate ourselves and look at all things 
impartially and dispassionately, however much 
we try — and after all, who would try?" 

" Oh ! of course," he said ; " half the beauty of 
it is memory and old delights; but there must be 



An Autumn Landscape ii 

something more than that. Ts it perhaps not a 
sense of beauty at all, but an ancient, instinctive 
sense of prosperity and husbandry — the well- 
reaped field, the plentiful pasture, some of which 
may come our way in the shape of loaves and 
sirloins." 

" No," T said, '^ that is really too horrible to 
suggest. Come, let us take the landscape to 
pieces, and see if we can detect its secret." 

So we stood for a little by the gate and 
measured it with our eyes, as the Romans used 
to say. 

" It is a good deal of it colour," I said. " First 
of all there is the sky — we have not apportioned 
ill at out, at all events, to landlords and syn- 
dicates! There is something free and essentially 
liberal about the sky; and that sapphire blue, 
with a hint of golden haze about it, is not wholly 
utilitarian. Those big, packed clouds down there, 
like snow-clad bluffs, I have no particular use for 
them, nor do I expect any benefits from them; 
but they are vaguely exciting and delightful ; and 
then the delicate curves and converging lines of 
the fields are beautiful in their way, neither 
disorderly nor too geometrical; and there is a 
sense, too, that the whole thing is not hopelessly 
deliberate. If this were a treeless expanse, 
geometrically squared, it would not be so attrac- 
tive. The whole thing has a history. The 
hamlets signify wells and springs, the byways 
meandering about stand for old forest tracks; 



12 Along the Road 

that lane dowu there Avhich gives a sudden 
Avriggle, quite unintelligible now, probably means 
a gigantic fallen tree which it was too much 
trouble to remove. And then the straight lines 
of the Roman roads — there is something invigor- 
ating about them." 

'^ But you are going back to associations/' he 
said, " and I don't den}^ them ; what about the 
admixture of wildness in the whole scene? I 
don't see much trace of that." 

" Oh," I said, " there are little bits of dingles 
everywhere, hedgerows unreasonably big, elms 
where they are not needed; a nice pit there, 
fringed with reeds and full of water, where gravel 
was dug long ago. Some perfectly meaningless 
pieces of old woodland, left there with a sense 
of pleasure and shade, I think, and the trees 
themselves, how charmingly irregular! I grant 
that the great black poplars down there are awk- 
ward enough, but look at the little gnarled, pol- 
larded elms round the farmstead, and the big 
sycamore in that close. There is just enough 
liberty about, to emphasise the fact that it is 
not all for mere use. But I grant you that it 
is all impossible to define; one can't get behind 
the joy of colour, and in England we care about 
colour very much, and not much about form." 

" Yes," said my friend, " I was told a curious 
thing about that the other day. A young diplo- 
mat said to me that he had been calling on a 
small farmer in Japan, quite a poor man; on the 



An Autumn Landscape 13 

centre of the table in his room lay a large flint 
stone. It looked so unaccountable that he said 
at last to the farmer, * What is that stone? There 
must be some story about it, I suppose. Why do 
you have it there?' The farmer said, ^ Why, of 
course, you see what a beautiful stone it is? 1 
have it here to look at because it is so beautiful.' 
My friend had noticed in the garden outside the 
house a little rockery of similar stones, and he 
said, * Well, you have some stones outside in 
the garden — this looks to me very much like 
those.' ^ Oh, no,' said the farmer, * those are 
quite common stones, useful enough, and some of 
them even pleasant, but not beautiful like this 
one. Come,' he added, * we will take it out and 
look at it side by side with them.' He did so, 
and pointed out all the superior grace and ele- 
gance of the original stone. My friend said that 
he simply had no idea what the farmer meant, 
and it was as if some sense were wanting in 
him. The farmer added, ^ It is a famous stone, 
too! People come to see it from a long way 
round, and I have even been offered a large price 
for it. But T cannot part with it, it is too lovely. 
When I come in tired with my work, I can forget 
my weariness in looking at my stone and thinking 
how fine it is.' " 

"Yes," I said, "that is a good story; and one 
hears, too, how workmen in Japan will keep a 
flower by them to look at in the pauses of their 
work, for refreshment, where an Englishman 



14 Along the Road 

would need a pint of beer to make him a cheerful 
countenance! " 

" I don't suppose," said my friend, " that any 
one of the people who work about here in the 
fields have any. sense of the beauty of it at all? 
They like the scene, perhaps, in a vague way, as 
something they are familiar with. But I have 
seen this very hill on which we stand, with the 
long wood on the top and the broken mill, black 
and solemn, with an evening sky behind it, all 
transfigured with a sense of something that it is 
just impossible to analyse or explain; and, of 
course, the most ordinary places, at dawn or 
sunset, if only they are quiet and simple enough, 
and not disfigured by some smart and intrusive 
piece of modernity, — like that corrugated iron 
barn-roof there, or that row of admirable cot- 
tages, — can take on a beauty of mystery and peace 
which seems to come from some old and pure 
source; and this quiet kind of beauty is perhaps 
the truest of all, this ' field-space and sky-silence/ 
which can respond to a hundred different moods, 
and gains all the mystery and depth of the true 
symbol by not too insistently claiming a special 
and peculiar loveliness of its own." 

" Yes," I said, " I am sure you are right about 
this; and I always suspect the sense of beauty in 
a man who goes in search of what is melodramatic 
and romantic in scenery, and complains of the 
dulness of the simple countryside. How one's 
heart pines, among the snow-peaks and pine-clad 



An Autumn Landscape 15 

gorges of Switzerland, for a row of elms aud a 
gabled farmstead! If one loves the unadorned 
landscape, one may take a draught every now 
and then of richer and more intoxicating scenery, 
like that of our English lakes — and yet half the 
heauty of that is its combination of great moun- 
tain-shapes and rugged ridges with the sweet and 
pastoral life that nestles in its dingles and green 
valleys. The joy of a mountain walk there is 
the passing through the level pastures, with their 
clear streams and tree-clad knolls, up into the 
steeper valleys, where the brook comes tinkling 
and dripping down among the thickets, with the 
steeply sloping stone-walled meadows, the quaint 
huddled hamlets propped at every kind of pleas- 
ant angle, and so out on to the moorland and 
up the green shoulders of the hill; and then the 
return, dropping from the bleak, black mountain- 
head down the wind-swept valley, till the trees 
begin, and one is back again in the comfortable 
range of humanity, with the sense of the old life 
of the world all about one, and the peoi)le who 
live their poetry instead of scribbling it down." 

" But I should be very sorry," said my friend, 
" if it were not sometimes scribbled down I I 
like to think of old Wordsworth, with his rustic 
form and sturdy legs, his plain face gaining, as 
his companions testified, an inspired solemnity of 
aspect from the sight of the earth that he loved 
so well — all that grows out of it, all that live.-j 
upon it. The beauty of the earth and the beauty 



i6 Along the Road 

of the human face — those are the only two kinds 
of beauty that we in England understand and 
express." 

By this time we were far on our way; but we 
halted once more, as we retraced our steps, on 
the brow of the hill, to watch the mist beginning 
to swim in faint veils and wreaths over the low- 
lying fields, under a green frosty sky, fringed 
with orange light; and farther yet the towers 
and spires of Cambridge rose softly out of the 
haze, the smoke drifting northwards in the 
breeze, without a sound except the sharp cry of 
some night-bird in the heart of the wood, and 
the rhythmical beat of horsehoofs, now loud now 
low, on the road that bore us back to the accus- 
tomed hearth, out of the twilight fields and the 
solitary hill. 



ST. GOVAN'S 

The little rough lane, with its decrepit hedges 
of turf and stones, ended suddenly in a broad 
sheet of grass, closely combed and elastic. Two 
hundred feet below lay the open Atlantic, its 
green waves riding majestically landward before 
the fresh wind. To left and right, over the high 
pastures, headland after headland ran out sea- 
ward. For miles on either hand the sheer grey 
cliffs dropped precipitously to the breakers, 
broken but twice or thrice by the inlet of creek 
or haven or sand-fringed bay, with here and there 
a toppling pinnacle of rock, cut off from the 
mainland, rising grimly out of the boiling surf. 

The cliff-edge was but a few yards away, and 
seemed as abrupt here as elsewhere ; but on draw- 
ing near, the head of a little ravine opened in 
the turf, with steep, rocky sides, the tufts of sea- 
thrift and shaggy grass clinging to ledge and 
cleft; in the sparse soil appeared the head of a 
rude staircase, made of little slabs of worn grey 
stone, deeply set. A few steps downwards, and 
there appeared, down below, the grey-slated roof 
and rough belfry of a tiny chapel, hanging be- 
a 17 



1 8 Along the Road 

tween sea and sky, half-embedded in the ground, 
and wedged between the steep rocks of the ravine 
from side to side, like a nest in a thicket. It 
looked strangely precarious there, with the wind 
volleying over it and the billows roaring beneath, 
as thougli a touch would have sent it bounding 
in ruins down the slope. A farther descent, with 
the crags closing in on either hand, brought one 
to the low-arched door; the whole place was in- 
credibly rude and ancient, built of roughly-shaped 
limestone fragments. Indeed, the antiquaries say 
that the masonry is Roman, and that it was evi- 
dently a little fort to guard the landing-place, 
which a hermit had restored and adapted to more 
pious uses. The roof within, low-vaulted and 
roughly plastered; the floor nothing but oozy 
marl, red and miry, with the rain-water dripping 
in pools by window and door. A single square 
aperture, open to the air, looked seaward, and 
the wind thundered through. There was a rude 
stone altar, and a low stone seat on each side, 
running the whole length of the chapel; at the 
west a little door led out upon the steep seaward 
track; beside the altar, another little door led 
into a sort of cave in the limestone, half-open to 
the sky; this was all rude and unshaped, except 
for a rough, upright niche on the left just large 
enough to contain the body of a man of moderate 
stature. Tradition says, and there is no reason 
to doubt it, that this is a place of penance. It 
is strange indeed to think of the old anchorite, 



St. Govan*s 19 

with his wild hair and beard, crouching naked 
in this dreary cleft, hour by hour, with the wind 
howling in the gully, and the rain dripping 
through the crevices, quenching rebellious tempta- 
tions, or expiating old light-hearted sins, and 
offering his pain with a willing heart to the 
pitiful Father of all living. 

Yet it cannot have been a wholly lonely life. 
The place was visited of old by hundreds of pil- 
grims. A little farther down the steep seaward 
track is a well, rudely arched over with rugged 
masonry, the water of which was credited with 
healing virtues. Even fifty years ago, it is said, 
there were to be seen, thrust in among the 
boulders, crutches and splints and bandages, 
votive offerings from simple pilgrims who had 
reason to think themselves cured by the sacred 
waters. It is all a very bewildering and start- 
ling mystery, not, I think, to be lightly dismissed 
as a mass of unscientific tradition and gross 
superstition. And in any case, the scene of so 
much human emotion, such suffering, such hopes, 
such gratitude, must have a pathos of its own. 
Now the wind whistles in the cleft, and the thin 
cry of the floating gull comes mournfully up, 
while the breakers blanch on the rocks below. 
In summer come parties of holiday-making folk, 
^'ho peer into the chapel, squeeze themselves 
laughing into the hermit's niche, sip the waters 
of the well, and feast pleasantly above the gently- 
lapping sea; and perhaps it is better so; though 



20 Along the Road 

one does not think that the hermit's penitential 
groans and the feverish prayers of the sufferers 
who dragged themselves so patiently down those 
rugged steps were utterly wasted. We still 
lament our faults, endure our pains, breathe our 
hopes, though we do it more tentatively, and, 
we claim, more reasonably to-day ! 

It is strange that nothing should be known of 
the hermit or the hermits that lived so hard a 
life between the sky and the sea. The name St. 
Govau does not even enshrine a sacred memory. 
It is nothing but a corruption of Sir Gawain, the 
ne})hew of King Arthur, and one of the most 
sin-stained and treacherous of the knights of the 
Round Table. It was said that he suffered ship- 
wreck here, and that this great body was washed 
ashore, bruised and shattered; and that at the 
time of the Conquest his tomb was still to be 
seen on the hilltop, a huge pile of hewn stone. 

But dim and strange as the human memories 
of the place are, the mind struggles backwards 
through the centuries, feeling its way helplessly 
across the tracts of time ; how tiny a fringe, after 
all, of the real life of the place is the part that 
it has played in human history and tradition! 
I suppose that for thousands of years there has 
been hardly a change in the aspect of the scene. 
When Israel came out of Egypt, when the Greeks 
fought round about Troy, when Romulus walled 
his little upland fort among the clustered hills of 
Rome, the sun shone, and the wind blew, and the 



St. Govan's 21 

rollers thundered in upon the gorse-clad pro- 
montory and the bleak cliff-precipices. The gulls 
and the sea-snails of the place have an ancestry 
that would put the pedigrees of kings and em- 
perors to shame. The mystery of it all is that 
these creatures of the surf and the cliff have lived 
their blind lives, generation after generation, with 
the passions and emotions of the day and the 
hour; is it all for nothing that they have lived 
and died? What has become of the life and 
spirit which animated them? It must at least 
be as lasting as the stone of the crag and the 
boulder of the shore; and we know of no pro- 
cess which should create either or bring either 
to an end. And then at last comes man; and 
here the amazing thing is that he can send his 
thought backwards and forwards through the 
ages, can imagine the endless procession of lives, 
the generations of creatures that have dwelt here. 
At my feet there crops out a piece of limestone 
through the turf, close-set with the fossil fibres 
of some prehistoric madrepore, the sign of a life 
embalmed and recorded, so ancient that the mind 
can hardly wrestle with the thought. Yet it all 
means something in the vast mind of God. And 
here is the wonderful part, that to man alone is 
it given to set himself as it were by the side of 
the Creator, and survey the range and progress 
of the eternal work; and then the thought flies 
farther yet, to the stars that hang, unseen in 
the noonday light, over sea and shore, each star 



22 Along the Road 

with its planets, like our own, inhabited doubtless 
by other creatures, with lives like our own, in- 
telligences, emotions, spirits, with what miracles, 
l)erhaps, of grace and redemption working them- 
selves out for them, through the mercy and 
loving-kindness of the Father of all. 

It is true that the mind cannot live or breathe 
or act at these altitudes; but for all that, there 
are days and hours when such thoughts are in- 
evitable and inspiring too, even though it may 
bring home to us how brief and negligible a thing 
is the opening of the windows of our own soul 
upon the daylight of the world. It is an awful 
and overmastering thought, for it reveals the 
almost ghastly insignificance of the single life; 
yet it is inspiring too, for it reveals that, how- 
ever small that life may be, it yet has a sure and 
certain place in the Father's thought; that His 
work was not complete without us, and that we 
are eternally and utterly in His care. 

Such was the message of the cliff-top and the 
sea, so that the little chapel became a place of 
visions, full of light, and resounding to the far- 
off harmony of a heavenly music. Could one but 
keep that music undimmed and pure ! 

But the day begins to darken to its close ; the old 
familiar tide of life sweeps up, and draws one back 
to work and love, to joy and pain — yet that awe- 
struck hope, that sense of far-off mystery is indeed 
an earnest of the heavenly vision. " When I awake 
up after Thy likeness, I shall be satisfied with it." 



A RUINED HOUSE 

I HAVE often wondered what can be the origin 
of the pleasure which human beings take in con- 
templating a ruined building. One would think 
that there must be something morbid in the de- 
light of seeing the skeleton, so to speak, of an 
ancient house or church, built for pleasure or 
piety, a thing that stands for so much vanished 
life, and faded pride, and vain expense; the 
broken abode of so many hopes and affections and 
joys, to say nothing of fears and sorrows. And 
I suppose that the charm partly lies there — the 
charm of " old unhappy far-off things," the sense 
of the joyfulness of life, its brave designs, its 
rich expectations; and then the brevity of it all, 
its unutterable pathos, its lavish suffering, and 
the dark mystery of its close. That is what 
people of experience and imagination find in the 
sight of an ancient ruin; and yet when the 
summer sun falls on ivied gable and mouldering 
arch, there comes a sense of tranquillity and 
content, as though death could not, after all, be 
really a shadow upon Nature, or a sundering 
flood, when decay itself can be so beautiful. 

23 



24 Along the Road 

I imagine that the whole emotion is a very 
modern one, hardly more than a century old. 
The strange thing is that the mediaeval builders, 
whose ruined towers and choirs we go far to see, 
had no trace of such a feeling. They frankly 
preferred the new to the old. They thought 
nothing of putting a new and gorgeous front on 
an old and simple church, and they were always, 
it seems, glad to pull anything down, if they 
could replace it by a smarter substitute. As for 
a ruin, it was simply a useless and uninteresting 
heap of stones, a convenient quarry, a place of 
perquisites. And then, too, we must remember 
that from the time of the Restoration, till Horace 
Walpole and Gray came on the scene, a Gothic 
building was considered a hideous and barbarous 
affair, to be replaced, if possible, by a neat 
classical edifice, and if not, to be endured in 
silence. No, the whole sentiment for what is old 
and ruinous is a modern one, and I think a 
tender one, good for heart and mind; though it 
argues perhaps a want of manly confidence in 
our own performances and improvements ; and is 
partly responsible for the fact that we cannot 
find a style of our own in architecture, but are 
alwaj^s trying combinations and reconstructions 
instead of striking out a new line. 

And then, too, for the present generation, a 
ruin is so often connected with happy holiday 
times, an expedition and a picnic; it stands for 
plenty of adventure and laughter and good 



A Ruined House 25 

humour and unusual food and pleasant relaxa- 
tion of normal discipline. I recall the summer 
jaunts of mv childhood, and try to disentangle 
what the charm of it all was. It certainly was 
not in the least connected with any sense of what 
was picturesque, nor had the imagination any- 
thing to do with it. I never attempted as a child 
to reconstruct any picture of the old life of the 
place, the armoured knights, the embowered 
ladies, the rough merriment of the guard-room 
or hall. I fancy that the pleasure was scram- 
bling on broken stairs, looking over dizzy para- 
pets, and peeping into dark vaults, combined with 
a very constant hope that one might stumble on 
some sort of buried treasure, a hoard of coins 
in an earthen vase, or a ring encircling a mould- 
ering finger bone. Such things had happened, 
and why not to me? I was not at all of the 
opinion of Matthew Arnold's eight-year-old sou, 
who was taken, it is recorded in his father's 
letters, to a picnic at Furness Abbey. Budge was 
the child's sobriquet. When the living freight of 
the carriage had emptied itself into the ruins, 
there were exclamations on every side, such as 
might fall from the members of a highly culti- 
vated circle, at the romantic charm of the place. 
The wise Budge waited till the tempest of 
aesthetic delight had spent itself, and then up- 
lifted a clear childish treble, " What a nastj^ 
heastly place ! " That unsophisticated opinion, 
that dispassionate judgment, is what I believe 



26 Along the Road 

the natural mind, complicated by no false sen- 
timent, no cultured association, ought undoubt- 
edly to feel at so melancholy, so wasteful, so 
disorderly a sight as a great building falling 
into decay. 

And yet, from whatever intricate source it may 
arise, that is not at all the thought of the mature 
mind. I have been spending some days in Pem- 
brokeshire, that marvellous bleak, wind-swept 
land, with its winding sea-creeks, its fantastic 
cliffs, its rocky islets. There is a paradise of 
romantic buildings! Valley after valley has its 
bastioned feudal fortress — Llawhadeu, Carew, 
Manorbier — the very names have a thrill! Ham- 
let after hamlet has an ivy-clad, stone-vaulted 
stronghold, and one can hardly conceive what 
conditions of life should have produced such a 
proximity of stately, guarded dwellings. On hill 
after hill there stands some low-arched, thick- 
walled church, with a great loop-holed tower, 
corbelled and machicolated, the high walls in- 
clining gently towards the top — " battering " is 
the technical term — which gives them a marvel- 
lous grace of outline. 

Here on a still winter afternoon, with a pale 
gleam of sun, we came suddenly on a place, Lani- 
phey by name, of which I had not so much as 
heard, which seems to me one of the most in- 
credibly beautiful things I have ever had the 
delight of seeing. It was one of the seven great 
houses of the Bishops of St. David's, but it was 



A Ruined House 27 

alienated from the see to Henry VIII. by Bishop 
Barlow, wlio seems to have been one of the most 
unsatisfactory prelates who ever bore rule in the 
Church. He married the prioress of a disbanded 
nunnery, Agatha Wellsburn by name, and his 
five daughters all married bishops! I shrink 
from recording the character of the bishop him- 
self, as sketched by a near relative. He dis- 
mantled the palace at St. David's, and sold the 
lead of the roof; Lamphey he parted with to the 
king, in favour of a godson of his own, a Dever- 
eux, who was the founder of the house of Essex ; 
in fact, the ill-fated Earl, the favourite and 
victim of Elizabeth, spent his happy youth in 
these towers. 

Down in a pleasant valley lies the great ruined 
house, by the side of a rapid, full-fed stream that 
runs through wooded hills, by sedge-fringed pas- 
tures and copse-clad dingles. The air is soft and 
sweet. Big palms grow in the open air by the 
ruined walls, and the ivy sprawls over the para- 
pets with marvellous luxuriance. The pleasaunce 
is now a high-walled garden, in the centre of 
which stands a tower of exquisite proportions, 
with a charming arched loggia at the top, a 
favourite design of Bishop Gower, the fourteenth- 
century Bishop of St. David's, who left this 
beautiful feature of his art in most of the palaces 
of the see. The building, which is wonderfully 
complete, stretches away beside the stream in two 
vast blocks of masonry, of all sorts of dates and 



28 Along the Road 

designs, with its towers and bastions and gables 
and buttresses, all wreathed in ivy, with a great 
profusion of ferns and creeping plants, the cattle 
stalled in its vaults, the garden implements stored 
in its stately chambers. Here, in its green soli- 
tude, with the stream swirling at its foot and 
the wind whispering in the thickets, it crumbles 
slowly to decay. 

Well, it served its turn, no doubt, the great 
house of Lamphey! One cannot help wondering 
at the strange fortune that surrounded these 
servants of Christ, these successors of the Gali- 
lean fishermen, with all this secular splendour, 
this feudal pomp and power! A Bishop of St. 
David's, with his retinue of knights and his seven 
castles, can have had but little leisure for apos- 
tolical duties. But it was a reward, no doubt, 
for all that the Church had done to Christianise 
and civilise this rude corner of the world; and 
it was just because the Church yielded to the 
temptations of aggrandisement, of influence, of 
wealth, that the fall and the spoliation followed. 
God or Mammon? The choice was clear, the 
warning was plain. As one looked at the great 
pile, so noble even in its humiliation, it was hard 
not to regret the vivid life, the stately splendour 
of what had been. Yet the broken tower and the 
ruined wall had their message too — that not by 
might or power are God's victories won. 



ST. ANTHONY-IN-THE-FELLS 

Not long ago I visited an extremel}^ curious and 
interesting church in the north of England. Its 
official title is Cartmel Fell; but the church is 
known in the neighbourhood by the more romantic 
title of St. Anthony-in-the-Fells. It stands not 
far from Kendal, in a wide valley sloping to the 
sea; a pastoral place, full of rich grass meadows 
and woodland, and with old picturesque farm- 
houses — niullioned, stone-slated, rough-cast build- 
ings, with round chimney-stacks and wooden 
galleries — in the midst of no less venerable and 
picturesque outbuildings. On one side of the 
valley runs a great limestone bluff, with its pale 
terraces and screes ; on the other, miniature crags 
and heathery uplands. 

The church itself is beautifully placed, just 
where the low-lying copses and pastures break 
into the open fell. The fields slope in all direc- 
tions, and are full of little ridges and outcrops 
of rock, fringed with tiny thickets. Here and 
there, in a green dingle, a spring soaks out 
among rushes, so that the air is musical with 
the sound of dropping waters. The building it- 

29 



30 Along the Road 

self is low, half-sunk in the ground, and covered 
with weather-stained rough-cast. The tower win- 
dows are fitted with great rough slanting slates. 
The church has not beauty of form or design, but 
it looks like a living thing which has grown up 
almost naturally out of the soil and site. From 
porch to transept runs a low bench of slate, a 
seat for gossips on a summer Sabbath morning, 
for shepherds to sit " simply chatting in a rustic 
row." Inside it is the quaintest place imaginable. 
In the big, many-mullioned east window, there 
is a congeries of old stained glass of the four- 
teenth century, which seems to have been roughly 
handled, and pieced together without much refer- 
ence to design. Here and there is a patch of 
gorgeous colour, rich red or azure, a crucifixion, 
a mitred saint or two, St. Leonard w^ith his chain, 
and St. Anthony with a sportive porker hunched 
up at the butt-end of his crozier. There is a 
scene which seems to be a confirmation, and all 
sorts of quaint fragments, such as an altar draped 
and vested, with holy vessels set out upon it, with 
square linen cards upon the chalices. I noticed 
in the vestry a heap of broken bits of glass of 
the same design, of finials and tabernacle-work, 
rude but spirited. The church is paved with 
irregular slabs of stone, all sloping slightly down- 
ward from the west, following the dip of the hill. 
A rudely-painted decalogue hangs on the eastern 
wall. But the strangest feature of the church 
is its pews, of all shapes and sizes, from huge 



St. Anthony-in-the-Fells 31 

deal erectioDS like loose boxes, to little gnarled 
oaken desks with plain finials. Then, in order 
to complete its unlikeness to any other place, on 
one side of the church, near the east, is a real 
state Jacobean pew, with panelled canopy and 
l)il asters; while on the other side stands what 
must have been a screened chantry, finely-carved, 
and with rich touches of colour lying on mould- 
ing and panel, the heads of the saints depicted 
having evidently been carefully deleted with some 
sharp-pointed instrument, in an ecstasy of Pro- 
testant devotion. 

There stands the little place, a real historic 
document from first to last, quaint, interesting, 
curious, and beautiful with that kind of beauty 
which can only come through age and association. 
Of course it will have to be restored, and very 
shortly too — that is the difficulty! On the one 
hand there is the pity of destroying so strange 
an accretion; yet, on the other hand, it cannot 
be called a seemly sanctuary. What is wanted 
is the most delicate sort of restoration, trying to 
keep everything interesting and characteristic, 
and yet making the place warm and homelike 
and solemn. What of course is to be feared is 
that enthusiastic subscribers and an ambitious 
architect will want to make a " good job " of it, 
which will end by making it just like any other 
church ; for that is the sad thing about our Eng- 
lish churches — I have visited a great many of 
late — that though special features and interest- 



32 Along the Road 

ing details are often carefully preserved, many 
churches have been practically rebuilt; and peo- 
ple do not seem to realise that a new church, 
however closely imitated from an old one, has 
only the interest of a copy, and is a skilful 
forgery at best; while it has lost all the subtle 
beauty of age, the half-tones, the irregularities, 
the dented surfaces, the tiny settlements, the 
weather-stains, which make the old building so 
harmonious and delicate a thing, even though the 
original design was of the simplest and plainest. 

Tt is very difficult to adjust the various claims. 
There is the perfectly natural and laudable de- 
sign to make a church a credit to the village; to 
make it an effective and comfortable building; 
to make it represent a definite ecclesiastical 
tradition. The last is perhaps the most perilous, 
because the tradition is not a natural and pro- 
gressive tradition, but a revived mediinevalism, and 
not a living development; yet after all, when all 
is said, I supposed that the instinct to sweep 
away, as debasing and offensive, all hint of what 
is Georgian, and even Jacobean, out of churches, 
means something, and is in its way historical, or 
on its way to become so. But meanwhile, like 
the gratitude of men, it leaves the philosopher 
mourning. 

Possibly the right principles to keep in view 
in restoring a church are these. Everything 
which is solid, costly, and of good workmanship 
ought to be retained, even if it does not harmonise 



St. Anthony-in-the-Fells 33 

with our present taste, whether it be monument, 
window, or church furniture. The most that 
ought to be permitted should be to move an 
object which is inharmonious, or supposed to be 
so, from a conspicuous to a less conspicuous posi- 
tion. But even if the workmanship is inferior, 
or if the object, whatever it be, is generally con- 
demned, then it ought in any case to be carefully 
stored, to await a possible revolution of taste. 

Early in the last century, when Skipton Church 
was restored, its splendid Tudor screen was con- 
demned as barbarous and inconvenient. An old 
relative of my own, resident in the town, begged 
for the materials. They were gladly handed over 
to him. He stored them in boxes in a warehouse. 
Many years later, when the ecclesiastical revival 
had taken place, and the church was once more 
renovated, there were loud lamentations on the 
loss of the screen. He produced it with modest 
triumph, and it was joyfully resuscitated. But 
what a lesson to zealous church-restorers, who 
say confidently and with no sort of misgivings, 
" Of course that frightful object must go ! " 



ANTIQUITIES AND AMENITIES 

I HAD been travelling in Northumberland, and I 
had spent a glorious morning, with a bright sun 
and a cold wind, on the Roman Wall. It is, 
indeed, a thing to stir the imagination. It runs 
over hill and dale by crag and moor, for sixty 
miles, from sea to sea. It is a double line of 
fortification, a huge stone wall to the north, and 
a great earth-work to the south. Inside the lines, 
the strip varies much in breadth. Every three 
miles lies a large fortified camp, with towers and 
guard-rooms, prjetorium and barracks. At every 
mile is a smaller fort, with guard-towers evevY 
three hundred yards. Many of these are gone, 
having been used to build farms and walls and 
to make roads. But many of them exist and 
have been excavated. In fact the whole place 
was one vast camp, sixty miles long and a few 
hundred yards broad; no one knows who built 
it. It may have been Hadrian, it may have been 
Severus. It has been sacked at least once, and 
repaired again; it was meant, no doubt, to keep 
off the warlike and ruthless Picts, and to make 
the south safe from their forays. 

34 



Antiquities and Amenities 35 

I had spent the moriiiug at Borcovicus, a great 
camp on the very bleakest and barest part of 
the moors. It has aU been excavated, and one 
can see the colonnade where the daily orders 
were read, the great gateways, with the pivot- 
holes of the gates, the guard-rooms, warmed in 
some cases by hot air, the elaborate arrangements 
for getting water, and for the disposal of sewage. 
The custodian had just disinterred a fine bit of 
sculpture, the bare feet of a Neptune, one resting 
on a dolphin's back. 

The whole place gave one the sense of a busy 
and urgent life, lived at high pressure, and with 
a stern purpose. The walls are of massive 
quarried stone, and the labour which must have 
been involved in quarrying and carving blocks 
and columns and cornices, and dragging them 
for miles over the moor, gives the idea of a 
tremendous command of human energies. But 
what a dreary life it must have been for 
Roman soldiers pent up in this high hill-station ! 
One wonders what they could have done with 
themselves. 

There is, indeed, at Borcovicus, outside the 
wall, a theatre hollowed in the turf, with a 
special gate to reach it; and I daresay the place 
has seen some foul brutalities. There were, no 
doubt, skirmishes from time to time. There was 
hunting in the wild thicket-clad ravines for the 
adventurous — the tusks of wild boars are often 
found in the ruins — but it must have been a very 



36 Along the Road 

unpleasant life I The elaborate arrangements for 
warminp: the houses show how much the Romans 
must have dreaded the cold up there in the 
snow-clad winter. 

We went on to Chesters, where there is a 
museum of curiosities found in the excavations. 
There are a few beautiful things of bronze and 
enamel, evidently brought from Rome. But the 
native products are rude enough — altars, tombs, 
sacred sculptures. Even here, there is a touch 
of human joy and sorrow which makes itself felt 
across the centuries. There is a votive altar to 
8ilvanus, set up by " the huntsmen of Banna," 
there is an affectionate inscription to a young 
freedman, a Moor, who died at the age of twenty, 
and his graceful figure is depicted reclining above 
the inscription, which says that his former master, 
Numerianus, followed him with grief to the tomb. 
There is an elaborate monument to the British 
wife of a young officer, who lavished loving care 
on her monument, himself a native of Palmyra. 
And then there are all the signs of life and 
activity — arrowheads, swords, spears, a curious 
leather shoe, with elaborate straps, all the debris 
of the daily round. Through the intense interest 
of the whole there falls a mournful shadow, the 
shadow" of vanished human endeavour, the old 
terror of war and violence. It was with a 
strange sense of pathos and wonder that I turned 
away. The river ran sparkling among its shingle, 
the woods rustled in the cool breeze; and over 



Antiquities and Amenities 37 

the hill, to left and right, one could see the deep 
lines of the vallum and the broken base of the 
wall, with the thorn-trees rooting in it, all so 
peaceful now, in the track of ancient wars, fought 
out fifteen centuries ago. 

And then, in order that my day might not be 
too happy, too sweet to be wholesome. Fate 
dropped the least drop of bitter in the cup, a 
dash of incivility; there is no more tonic drug 
than that, because it teaches a man that he must 
depend solely on his ingratiating merits for 
favour, and cannot win it by the coat he wears 
— though it is true that my coat is not a very 
impressive one — or by the money he can jingle in 
his pocket. These Northumbrians, too, are so ex- 
traordinarily kindly and courteous, in a dignified 
way, that they spoil one. As a rule they talk to 
one graciously and smilingly, as if half honoured, 
half amused by the rencontre^ with that pleasant 
broken burr, in the softest of voices, with a 
peculiar silky texture which caresses the ear; 
there is no servility of deference, but an equal 
and good-humoured courtesy, as between friends 
and brothers. 

Now, however, it was very different; just as 
I ])assed the stone gate-posts of a grange, I saw 
a shepherd driving his flock out of a field hard 
by. My way lay to the village of Four Stones, 
across the hill. Just where I saw the shepherd, 
there was an uncompromising road which went 
solidlv over the bluff. But on the map was 



38 Along the Road 

marked a pleasant grass track a little farther 
on. Now, I have always regarded a shepherd as 
a lesser kind of angel. When I have talked to 
them before, they have spoken in kind, high 
voices, as of men who have struggled with winds 
on weary mountain-heads, and they have had a 
remote and secluded look, as of men who have 
not much commerce with their fellows. But 
they have always seemed to me men of patience 
and gentleness — and indeed if the care of a flock 
of hill-sheep does not give a man a chance 
of becoming both, there is no discipline that 
will ! 

But this shepherd was a pale, shrewish-looking 
man, alert and aggressive, with bushy whiskers 
and eyebrows, and, what disconcerted me most, 
a strange resemblance to Mr. Ruskin about him, 
which gave me that odd feeling of knowing the 
man and being familiar with his thought. 

I said to him, " Is there a footpath a little 
farther on over the hill, to Four Stones?" 

He looked at me from head to foot with a 
quick, bustling air, as if he thought it imperti- 
nent of me to ask him a question, and made no 
reydy. I repeated my inquiry. 

" I hear ye," he said. 

I was vexed by this, and repeated my question 
again. 

" This is the road to Four Stones," he said. 

" Yes," T said, " T know that. Here is the 
sign-post! AThat T want to know is whether 



Antiquities and Amenities 39 

there is a footpath farther on. There is one 
marked on the map." 

" I don't know nothing about your map," he 
said, wrinkling up his eyebrows. 

" Yes, but is there a footpath over the hill ? " 
T said. 

" I 'm thinking there '11 be none," he said. 

" Yes, but do you know there is none? " I said. 

" I tell ye I know there is none," he said, 
raising his voice angrily. 

" Well," I said, " I think you might have said 
so before; and I will tell yoii something, and 
that is that you are the first man I have found 
in Northumberland who is rude to strangers." 

He gave me an ugl}^ look, and I think he would 
have liked to hit at me with his stick if he had 
dared. I went off along the road, having shot 
my bolt. A man does not like being told in his 
own country that he is rude to strangers. Even 
the Carinthian boor, who we know shuts his door 
on a houseless stranger, would be accessible to 
such a taunt. A long way up the road I turned 
and looked back, and he was still standing where 
I had left him, looking evilly after me. The man 
was a Pict, no doubt, and it was in his blood to 
resent intrusion. I dare say his ancestors had 
had brushes fifteen centuries ago with well-fed 
Roman soldiers; and he did not like strangers 
who asked questions about the locality; he felt 
that they meant mischief, and, I daresay, thanked 
God that he was rid of a knave. 



40 Along the Road 

But fortune was on my side, and was de- 
termined, evidently, to vindicate Northumbrian 
courtesy. As I came down into the village of 
Four Stones, a dreary hamlet on the bank of 
the Tyne, with a tall-chimneyed factory and heaps 
of scoria^, I asked a little eager man, with a 
small white beard, the way to the station. 

" It 's hard by here," he said breathlessly, " I 
will walk with you and show it you." We walked 
together and discoursed of the weather. " Yes," 
he said, " we want rain ; the river is low, and the 
lands are burnt up; but we may be thankful that 
it is better here than in the south." I told him 
that I came from the south, and that the pas- 
tures were all burnt brown. " Indeed? " he said, 
with much concern, '^ Yes, it 's been a hard 
summer down south, no doubt." By this time 
we were close to the station, and he pointed it 
out to me. I asked if there was a train soon 
to Gilsland. " Indeed, there is," he said, and 
whipped out a watch, ^' in thirty-two minutes, 
precisely." " Can I walk along the river," I said, 
"till the train comes in?" " Yes," he said, "by 
all means ; it 's a nice walk. I '11 show you 
how to get there. I '11 walk with you and put 
you in your way." He whisked round, and led 
me to a level-crossing. " You may go through 
here," he said. " You have twenty-nine minutes " 
— he plucked out his watch. " Now, mind," he 
said, with an uplifted forefinger, " the express 
runs through first — don't you be alarmed if you 



Antiquities and Amenities 41 

see it. Your train — that 's the slow one — runs 
in eight minutes behind — a pleasant walk to 
you I '' 

This energetic and friendly man set me right 
with the world. I felt welcomed, introduced to 
the country, made free of its pleasant places. 
There was no Pictish blood in my white-bearded 
friend ! When I came back to the level-crossing, 
he was waiting for me. " Have you enjoyed your 
walk?" he said; '^that's right — and now to the 
station ! The express will just be coming through. 
Have a care of it as you cross the line." 



ABDINGTON 

How well I remember, on a hot September even- 
ing nearly thirty years ago, how the carriage in 
which four travellers were driving — all of them 
weary and one of them considerably awed — 
passed in at a lodge-gate, leaving suburban villas 
and rows of brick-built villas behind, into the 
cool, pine-scented gloom of a great park. What 
a domain it seemed ! We passed between heathery 
hills, among high thickets of rhododendrons, by 
a lake, and then out into a spacious expanse of 
grass with clumps of oaks and beeches, and saw 
below us the long fagade of a huge stone-built 
house with a stately air of spacious dignity about 
it. That was my first sight of Addington. 

Moreover, I had the quite inexplicable convic- 
tion, which darted in my mind as we drove, that 
we should come to live there. How soon and how 
unexpectedly that conviction was fulfilled ! 

The party consisted of my father and mother, 
my elder sister and myself. Archbishop Tait was 
lying ill ; but he had rallied so often from more 
serious illnesses, that few even of those about 
him realised that he was dying. He had ex- 

42 



Addington 43 

pressed a wish to see my father, and he had in 
his mind a belief that my father would then, or 
nltimately, succeed him. " I am worn out," he 
liad written about that time, adding: " the Bishop 
of Truro will come forward and do a great work.'- 

On that occasion I never saw him, though he 
sent me and my sister an affectionate message. 
^'^^e stayed there several days; the present Arch- 
bishop was then acting as chaplain. It was a 
quiet family party, and we were all made entirely 
at home. 

The house had been bought for the See at the 
beginning of the nineteenth century, and Man- 
ners-Sutton was the first Archbishop who lived 
there. He, together with Howley, Sumner, Long- 
ley, and Tait, were all buried in the churchyard, 
and the present Archbishop has just put up a 
beautiful monument to their memory there. 
There was an old archiepiscopal palace at Croy- 
don, which still exists, with Laud's woodwork 
in the chapel, now, I believe, an Anglican con- 
vent. But it was an inconvenient house, on low- 
lying and damp ground, and even then Croydon 
was beginning to spread round about it. Ad- 
dington was built by a Lord Mayor, Trecothick 
by name. It had been a royal manor, held by 
some quaint tenure of an annual present to the 
Sovereign of a dish of sweet almond paste! The 
house was largely added to when Archbishop 
Manners-Sutton went to live there. The ground 
falls so rapidly that one drives up in front of 



44 Along the Road 

what is practically the first floor. It has no 
great architectural merit, but it is a stately and 
comfortable house with many large rooms, and 
one of the most noble cedars on the lawn that 
I have ever seen. 

The old Croydon archiepiscopal estate passed 
eventually into the hands of the Ecclesiastical 
Commissioners, and has become immensely valua- 
ble; the unearned increment does not go to the 
Archbishop, but into the common fund of the 
Commission. That seems an equitable enough 
arrangement where a merely ecclesiastical per- 
sonage is concerned ! 

I cannot honestly say that it ever seemed to 
me a very appropriate house for an Archbishop. 
It was convenient enough, being only thirteen 
miles from Lambeth, but its great woods, full of 
winding drives laid out by Howley, its enormous 
stables and gardens, the beautiful and various 
scenery of the park, are all too much in the style 
of the grand seigneur. The life lived there by 
the first Archbishops was quiet enough. Arch- 
bishop Howley's daily letters just covered the 
bottom of a china bowl which stood in the hall ; 
Archbishop Sumner used to make charming water- 
colour drawings of trees in the park. My father 
became deeply devoted to the place; but he had, 
whence derived I know not, all the instincts of 
a territorial magnate, and some of his happiest 
days were spent in strolling about the woods 
with the bailiff, settling which trees were to be 



Addington 45 

cut down. But my father did not enjoy it 
selfishly; he continued the hospitable custom of 
the Taits, and issued a large number of tickets 
of admission to the park to neighbours and resi- 
dents, besides giving free leave to parties to 
picnic there. But it used to vex him sorely to 
find how visitors used to leave paper about, carry 
away masses of flowers, and even dig up ferns 
and daffodils for their own gardens. I remember 
how once he heard an unusual noise in the garden 
outside his library, and on going to the window, 
found a huge picnic party who had invaded the 
private garden, were laying their lunch on the 
lawn, and looking in at the ground-floor windows ! 

There was a chapel there which my father 
beautified with woodwork and frescoes, and in 
which he took great delight. Indeed, so much 
attached did he become to the place, and so im- 
portant did he consider its mi5:ture of seclusion 
and convenience, that I have heard him arguing 
the case for its retention, and convincing himself 
by his own eloquence of its advantages, to such 
an extent that he came to the triumphant con- 
clusion that if either Lambeth or Addington 
must be given up, it must be Lambeth rather 
than Addington. 

Archbishop Temple, however, came to the oppo- 
site conclusion. The house was sold, as soon as 
he succeeded, for a very inadequate price, to a 
Mr. English, who enlarged and greatly beautified 
the house; and owing to his decease it is again 



46 Along the Road 

in the market. It will doubtless ultimately be 
divided aud cut up for building laud. 

I do uot think that, much as he loved Adding- 
ton, my father was ever very well there. His 
temperament demanded activity rather than re- 
pose. At Addington, though his w^ork was 
terribly heav;^^ he used to write a little at his 
beloved Cyprian, aud he greatly enjoyed riding 
over the quiet country which stretched away to 
the south. But my impression of him at Adding- 
ton is that he was more often than not depressed 
and anxious. Away from the stir of the London 
life, aud with more leisure to think, he used to 
feel the stress of the great pi-oblems w^ith which 
he was confronted, and his own fancied inade- 
quacy to deal w^th them. Yet the house is in- 
separably connected with him in my memories. 
I can see him with his cloak and soft hat, pacing 
up and down on a sunny, frosty morning in the 
garden terrace, looking up at the great cedars 
which he loved. I can see him dressed for riding, 
feeding the horses with bread and sugar at the 
door, or strolling on Sunday with his canvas bag 
of broken crusts for the swans on the pool, and 
a Christian Year in his hand, which he would 
read aloud to the party, sitting on a heathery 
bank in the wood. Most clearly of all, I can see 
him in his purple cassock after evening chapel, 
sitting down to write endless letters till one or 
two in the morning, looking up with a smile as 
we came to say good-night, twitching the glasses 



Addington 47 

off his nose to enjoy a few minutes of leisurely 
talk. But for all that it is not to me, as I say, a 
place of very happy memories, because my father's 
spirits tended to be low there; and I never knew 
any one whose moods, however carefully he 
guarded them, so affected the spirits of the circle 
by which he was surrounded. 

He was very hospitable, and there was a con- 
stant stream of visitors there, from high officials 
of Church and State to relations and family 
friends. There used to be dinner-parties of pleas- 
ant neighbours, children's theatricals, toboggan- 
ing-parties, and all the stir of a big country house. 
But I never somehow felt it to be very real; we 
were simple professional people, and there seemed 
an artificial air of state about it all. But I do 
not think my father ever felt that; he had a 
natural princeliness both of mind and manner, 
and Addington seemed a fit setting for his per- 
fectly unaffected greatness. He took a great in- 
terest in the people on the estate, and his 
Christmas Day sermons, when he reviewed the 
joys and sorrows of the village for the past year, 
used to have an extraordinarily affecting quality 
of simple and homely emotion. 

The new palace at Canterbury, built under the 
auspices of Archbishop Temple, is a singular con- 
trast to Addington. It is an ingenious adaptation 
of an old house, with some additions; but it is 
shut in by buildings, close under the Cathedral ; 
it has no stables, and a tiny garden. My father 



48 Along the Road 

used to maintain that the Archbishop was better 
away from Canterbury, and indeed, even on his 
own accession to the See, T believe he actually 
paid a customary fee to make himself free of the 
place — the fact being that in old times the enter- 
tainment of an Archbishop with his suite at 
Canterbury was so serious an affair, from the 
expense entailed, that matters had to be finan- 
cially accommodated ! 

Archbishop Temple behaved, I remember, with 
extraordinary generosity, when my father died. 
He took over the whole contents of Addington 
by valuation, as we had done, though he was not 
legally bound to do so, and had no thought ex- 
cept to make things easier for us. The trans- 
ference of the See-house to Canterbury was 
warmly welcomed by the city and the diocese, 
and it no doubt has some advantages, though 
it necessitates the Archbishop having to pass 
from one official life to another, instead of giv- 
ing him some much-needed quiet and seclusion 
after the ceaseless engagements of the London 
life. 

But the giving up of Addington is symbolical 
of more than that. In my father's time it was 
simply a survival of a state of affairs which 
could not have continued. It marks the altera- 
tion from the position of the Archbishop, who 
was in the days of Manners-Sutton a great official 
of State, with few duties and responsibilities, for 
whom the setting of a great country house among 



Addington 49 

woods and gardens was a perfectly natural 
appanage, to the position which he now holds, 
of the superintendence of enormous interests and 
activities, combining with the duties of a huge 
department of religious and social life. 

My father's unbounded interest and vitality, 
the way in which he threw himself into the 
smallest details of his life, made it just possible 
for him to continue the two positions. But the 
old order has here rightly given place to the new, 
and it cannot be restored. We may regret the 
loss of picturesqueness, even of dignity; but a 
Bishop is no longer a territorial magnate; his 
income can no longer be used simply in keeping 
up feudal state. He needs it, if he needs it, 
for hospitality, and to give him the power of 
initiating and supporting religious enterprises, 
and not for mere magnificence. His dignity must 
be the dignity which is earned by sympathy, and 
efficiency, and commanding qualities of wisdom 
and high-mi ndedness, and can no longer be the 
mere reflection of mediaeval state and lordliness. 



BKENT KNOLL 

It was on a fine,* fresh January morning that we 
raced merrily over the wide, alluvial plain of 
Somersetshire, once a vast salt-marsh, to the great 
green, high-standing bulk of Brent Knoll. It was 
a very familiar object to me in my school-days, 
the knoll, as I went and returned to Eton or to 
Truro by the Great Western Railway. I used to 
look out for it with pleasant curiosity. Seen 
from the line it consisted of a high, round head, 
with the line of ancient earthworks at the top 
plainly visible, and below that a steep plateau, 
with an almost geometrically flat summit, the 
side of it intersected by narrow, parallel hedged 
fields and orchards, running up from the strag- 
gling village at the base. To-day we came to it 
from the north, and halted first at East Brent, 
where there is a big, perpendicular church with 
a fine spire and a large rectory hard by, whence 
for many years Archdeacon Denison issued his 
ecclesiastical lightnings. I remember the little, 
fiery, humorous man well. He was a brother of 
the Speaker Denison, the moving spirit of the 
Speaker^s Commentary. I saw the Archdeacon at 

50 



Brent Knoll 51 

a Congress, cleliveriiii:^ one of his shrill diatribes, 
a jaunty little figure, looking as though he were 
made of some irrepressible india-rubber, with ac- 
tive gaitered legs, a very short apron, and the air 
of a militant cock-sparrow. His speech was a lively 
one, full of good-tempered animosity and pre- 
posterous exaggeration. His denunciations were 
listened to with affectionate amusement, while 
he threatened the impenitent world with disaster 
and decadence, a sort of clerical Boythorn. 

The church itself is a fine one, with a quaint 
Jacobean galler}^, the walls much disfigured by 
crumbling modern sentimental frescoes. The only 
thing I regretted was that a charming old brazen 
sconce lay neglected in a gallery pew. Then we 
sped round to the village of Brent Knoll, and 
there, in a delicious combe with hanging woods, 
we ate our sandwiches by a hedgerow filled with 
hart's-tougue fern, while a sociable robin hopped 
round us and loudly claimed his share of the 
meal. His wish was gratified; but fate came 
upon him in the form of a gaunt black hen, who 
burst through a gate, and charged stamping 
down, to take her share of the plunder. 

We strolled up to the other church hard by, 
restored out of all interest, with the exception 
of a charming Caroline monument, carved and 
painted, in three panels. In the centre is a jolly, 
complacent cavalier, with slashed and ruffled 
sleeves of dainty blue and white, and a fine red 
gold-fringed sword-sash; below are displayed an 



52 Along the Road 

ensign and a drum ; on either side of him are his 
two buxom and plump wives; one blue-eyed and 
smiling, with a great flapping hat ; the other more 
demure, in a delicate brown kirtle. Here, too, I 
mourned to see a splendid bit of Jacobean iron- 
work, which must once have sustained a big 
chandelier, stored uselessly in the vestry. Who 
can fathom the mysteries of ecclesiastical purism? 

This done, we addressed ourselves to the ascent. 
In half an hour we were standing in the tumbled 
grassy earthworks of the camp at the top. These 
great bastioned British forts are rather a mys- 
tery. The}^ can never have been inhabited, as 
there is no possibility of obtaining water, except 
by dragging it up the hillside — unless the rain- 
water was stored in a pool. They must only 
have been used as camps of refuge in times of 
danger, for the safety of women and children 
and other live-stock — and what dreary, filthv 
places they must have been ! 

The view was stupendous ; to the west were the 
shadowy Quantocks, with a great tidal river 
broadening to the sea. The hills of Wales were 
dim in the haze beyond the Channel, and there 
were several big steamers rolling and dipping 
out to the open sea. To the south rose the Men- 
dips, beyond the great green flat; to the north, 
Weston-super-Mare lay out on the hillside, with 
its long lines of trim villas, and the grey-green 
ridge of the Bleadon Hills. In the calm after- 
noon we could hear the crowing of cocks far 



Brent Knoll 53 

below, and the horns of motors racing along the 
Bridgwater road. 

It is good for the body to climb the steep 
slopes and breathe the pure air; it is good for 
the mind to see the map of England thus fairly 
unrolled before the eye; and it is good for the 
soul, too, to see the world lie extended at one's 
feet. How difficult it is to analyse the vague and 
poignant emotions which then and thus arise! 
There is first a sense of history; one thinks of 
our rude and brutish forefathers, skulking like 
conies into their hill-burrows at the sight of the 
column of Roman legionaries, with clanking 
horses and glittering spears. One has a sense, 
too, of how the world was subdued and replen- 
ished, and how the great salt-marsh by slow 
degrees became the rich pasture with all its 
dykes and homesteads. And then there comes, 
too, a sense of the continuity and solidarity of 
life. One thinks of the slow tide of humanity 
ebbing and flowing in the great fields, and set- 
ting homewards to the village street, with its 
smoke going up in the still air. What do all 
these little restless lives mean, so closely knit 
to each other and to oneself, and all so sharply 
separate? One thinks, too, of the romance of it 
all; the boy and girl playmates of the village 
green, the lovers wandering on June evenings 
among the thickets in the steep combe; then the 
lives of slow labour and domestic care, the genera- 
tion renewing itself; and then the chair in the 



54 Along the Road 

siiimy cottage garden, and last of all the church- 
yard and the tolling bell. One thinks, too, of the 
old sailor, reared, perhaps, long ago in the village 
at one's feet, as he plies up and down the Channel, 
sees the breezy top of the knoll, and remembers 
the boyish rambles in the old careless days at 
home. No one can, I think, avoid such thoughts 
as these, and though one cannot dwell on them 
for long, yet it is good to let them dart thus into 
the mind, as one sits on the grassy bastion, with 
the wind rustling past, and the windows of far-off 
farms glittering in the haze of the wide plain. 

But the day began to decline, and we made 
our way, in a smiling silence, down the steep 
paths; how soon we were at the head of the 
village street, among clustered orchards and deep- 
littered byres; and the sun began to set as we 
came to East Brent; the mist rose up in airy 
wefts among the elms; the black shadow of the 
knoll crept swiftly out across the plain ; and soon 
we were flying homewards in the dusk, with a 
low orange sunset glaring and smouldering in the 
west, by quiet lanes, with tall, high-chimneyed 
farms standing up among bare elms, the cattle 
loitering home in the muddy track, and great 
white fowls going solemnly up one by one into 
the boarded roost. 

What a glad thing life would be if it were but 
made up of such days, and if it could last thus I 
It seemed terrible out there in the quiet dusk 
to think of the men and women immured in 



Brent Knoll 55 

crowded cities and in little slovenly rooms. But 
even so, one knew that it was life that one de- 
sired, life and work and companionship. These 
vague reveries, so full of sunset light and slumber- 
ous sound — the wind in the orchard boughs, the 
trickle of the stream through the grass-grown 
sluice — are sweet enough, but unsubstantial too. 
They can be but an interlude in business and 
care and daily labour. One would not, if one 
could, fly like Ariel on the bat's back and swing 
in the trailing flower. How one would crave for 
the stir, the language, the very scent and heat 
of life! But it is good, for all that, to get away 
at times above and beyond it all, as in an island 
above the rushing tide ; to feel for a moment that 
we are larger than we know, and that the goal 
of our pilgrimage is not in sight. To live in the 
past and in the future; to perceive that there is 
a deep and gracious design in and beyond these 
mysteries of light and colour, of sound and silence. 
It is thus, I think, that we press for an instant 
close to the heart of the world, catch a glimpse 
of the deepest secret of life, the symbols of eter- 
nity, and even of the glory that shall be revealed 
to us, if we are patient and hopeful and wise. 

That was what the green head of Brent Knoll 
said to me this day, rising steeply among its 
rough pastures and leafless thickets, with the pale 
and wintry sunshine over all, and the smoke 
drifting up into the stillness from the clustered 
village at its feet. 



MR. GLADSTONE 

Enough has been said aud written about Mr. 
Gladstone's political position and ecclesiastical 
views ! I shall not attempt to touch upon either, 
but I should like to draw, so to speak, a rough 
sketch of my impression of his personality. I 
met him a good many times, and saw him under 
rather exceptional circumstances; arid I formed 
a very definite impression of him. It may be a 
wrong impression; it may be that I only saw 
him, as it were, in certain attitudes; but it is a 
definite point of view, and may not be without 
interest. 

My first sight of him was when I was an Eton 
boy; it was the custom for persons of eminence, 
instead of taking their places in chapel with the 
congregation, to walk in at the end of the pro- 
cession with the Provost. The rule was for the 
boys to remain seated until the entrance of the 
dignitaries, and then to rise to their feet. When 
Provost Goodford made his appearance — he was 
himself a picturesque figure, a small man, with 
a halting walk, in a voluminous surplice, with 
very high collars, such as were afterwards asso- 

56 



Mr. Gladstone 57 

ciated with ^fr. Gladstone himself, and a great 
^' choker " tied in a large irregular bow — side by 
side with him came a sturdy figure in a grey 
summer frock-coat, and carrying a white hat, with 
a rose in his button-hole. The Provost motioned 
to him to go up the steps leading to the stalls, 
and with a low bow, Mr. Gladstone — I recognised 
him at once — complied. I sat close beneath him, 
and could not take my eyes off him. I remember 
his pallor, the dark glitter of his eyes, and, above 
all, the extreme reverence he displayed through- 
out the service. That impression is as distinct 
to me as on the day I received it, thirty-seven 
years ago. 

In later days I met him at Eton and at Lam- 
beth, at parties and privately. I spent a Sunday 
at Hawarden about 1887, and had a long talk 
Avith him while walking in the park. The late 
Lord Acton was staying in the house, and I was 
present at a discussion which took place between 
the two great men on some minute historical 
point. Mr. Gladstone, it seemed to me at the 
time, knew all about the subject that had been 
known, but Lord Acton appeared to know all that 
could ever be known, and the deference which 
the politician paid to the historian was very 
impressive. 

The one characteristic which dominated all 
others was the sense Mr. Gladstone gave of enor- 
mous vitality and equable strength. His rather 
clumsily built, sturdy frame, his massive features, 



58 Along the Road 

his large eyes, with that tremendous glance full 
of fire and command, produced a sense of awe, 
almost of terror. His voice was unlike anything 
I ever heard, like the voice of many waters. It 
seemed to have an indefinite reserve of strength 
and thunder in it, and in talk it was like the 
ripple of a great river. One felt that if he raised 
it to its full extent, it might carry everything 
away. I remember hearing him in church say 
the responses to the Commandments with a 
variety of intonation, and an intensity of earnest- 
ness that made it unconsciously impressive as a 
rhetorical display. And then, combined with all 
this, was the noblest and sweetest courtesy that 
can be imagined. He gave his whole attention, 
and his profoundest respect, to any one with 
whom he found himself. The result was a kind 
of stupefying magnetism. That a man of such 
note, such august force, should condescend to be 
so much interested and pleased in the humblest 
auditor seemed incredible, and yet patently true. 
I recollect how once at a large dinner-party at 
Lambeth, when the guests were going aAvay, Mi*. 
Gladstone, who I did not suppose knew me by 
sight, crossed the room to shake hands with me, 
and to say in a kind of leonine whisper, " Floreat 
Etona!'' 

The result of all this was that his most trivial 
remarks seemed to be the result of mature re- 
flection, and to carry with them a sort of pas- 
sionate conviction. I remember a trifling instance 



Mr. Gladstone 59 

of this. We were sitting at tea on the Sunday 
afternoon at Hawarden in the open air. Mr. 
Gladstone was reading at intervals with profound 
attention in a little book, bound in blue cloth, 
which 1 can only describe as having been in ap- 
]>earance of the Sunday-school type. Occasion- 
ally he closed the book, and joined in the 
talk. Something was said about the right use of 
abbreviations in printed books, when Mr. Glad- 
stone intervened, and said with passionate em- 
j>hasis that by far the most important contribution 
to the practical welfare of the world he had ever 
made was the invention of two financial symbols 
to express respectively a thousand and a million. 
As far as I can recollect, the symbol for a thou- 
sand was the letter M, for a million the letter M 
surrounded by a circle. After a pause he added 
in a melancholy tone, " But it was not taken up, 
and the world has never profited by a discovery 
that might have infinitely enriched it." We sat 
aghast at the folly and indifference of the human 
race. 

Again, there is a story of how, at Hawarden, 
the conversation once turned on walnuts; and 
^[r. Gladstone, in a pause, said in thrilling tones: 
" I have not eaten a walnut since I was a boy 
of sixteen," — and then added in a cadence of 
melancholy dignity, " nor, indeed, a nut of any 
kind." The auditor who told me the story said 
that the remark was received like an oracle, and 
that he had for the moment the impression that 



6o Along the Road 

he had been Ihe recipient of a singular and 
momentous confidence — such was the magnetic 
force of the speaker. The effect, I used to think, 
was augmented by the forcible burr with which 
the letter R was pronounced, which gave a curious 
richness to the whole intonation. 

But the most memorable instance of the same 
quality was afforded by a lecture I once heard 
him give at Eton on " Artemis." The lecture was 
kept private, and reporters were excluded. T was 
.asked to furnish a summary for The Stanclarrl, 
and sat close to the lecturer. He spoke for over 
an hour, with flashing eyes, magnificent gestures, 
and splendid emphasis. At the time it seemed to 
me one of the most absorbing and enrapturing 
discourses I had ever heard. He described in the 
course of it the Homeric adventure of a woman 
— I forget the reference — who, Mr. Gladstone said, 
" had grossly misconducted herself, in more than 
one particular." We sat thrilled with horror at 
the thought of her depravity — and when he pro- 
ceeded to state that the irate goddess " beat and 
belaboured her," we drew a breath of satisfaction, 
and felt that the crime and punishment were 
duly proportioned. Again, when he told us that 
Artemis had special privileges in regard to cheese 
and butter, we were profoundly affected. At the 
end of the lecture, in reply to a vote of thanks, 
Mr. Gladstone made a moving speech, comparing 
himself, as a visitor to his old school, with 
Antaeus drawing vigour from contact with his 



Mr. Gladstone 6i 

native soil ; and thus ended one of the most re- 
markable displays of fascination exerted over a 
spellbound audience I have ever heard. But when 
I came to draw up my report, I could not think 
where the whole thing had vanished to. The force 
and fragrance of the discourse had evaporated. 
The conclusions seemed unbalanced, the illustra- 
tions almost trivial. Not only could I not make 
my account impressive, I could not even make it 
interesting. 

And this, I think, holds good of the quality 
of Mr. Gladstone's intellectual force; it was im- 
mensely strong, lucid, and copious; but it lacked 
charm and humanity. His prose writings are 
uninteresting; his Homeric studies are unreliable, 
and give one a sense of logical conviction rather 
than of imaginative perception; when one is re- 
constructing the life of a period, it cannot be 
done by a theory, however ingeniously poised on 
existing details. A case can never be constructed 
out of surviving details — the faculty of historical 
imagination must complete the vision. And this 
was what Mr. Gladstone could not do. He could 
not travel outside the facts, and therefore de- 
pended too much upon them. Facts must not be 
ignored, but they must not be accepted as com- 
plete. I even respectfully doubt whether his 
speeches will continue to be read for their literary 
qualities. They were astonishing manifestations 
of logical lucidity and verbal copiousness. He 
never hesitated for a word, and he wound up the 



62 Along the Road 

most intricate sentences, containing parenthesis 
within parenthesis, with unfailing certainty. But 
they are rhetorical displays of mental force rather 
than oratorical expressions of ideas and emotions ; 
and they depended for their cogency upon the 
I^ersonal background, the energy and grandeur of 
the man. Again, Mr. Gladstone was too vehe- 
mently and absorbingly in earnest for literary 
achievement. He had little lightness of touch. 
Tt has been debated whether he had a sense of 
humour. The case may be argued in the affirma- 
tive, but it can hardly be sustained. He told 
stories humorous in intention, and his emotions 
sometimes flowered in an epigram. But his tem- 
perament, his sense of momentous issues, his 
moral force, were inconsistent with humour in 
its larger sense. It would have detracted rather 
than added to his power. If he had possessed 
humour, he could not ever have attained to the 
art of noble and genuine self-persuasion, which 
he undoubtedly practised. He has been ac- 
cused of inconsistency; but he had what is 
the truest consistency of all, the power of be- 
ing able to reconstruct his opinions with entire 
sincerity. 

Whatever line of life Mr. Gladstone had chosen, 
he would have been supreme. That magnetic 
force, that intellectual vigour, sustained by 
purity of heart and motive, and controlled by 
courtesy, made him irresistible. He might have 
made an immense fortune as a merchant; he 



Mr. Gladstone 63 

might have been Lord Chancellor; he might have 
been Pope. He could not have been obscure 
and unknown; for he had a splendid and un- 
embarrassed simplicity, a resistless force and 
energy, that streamed from him as light from 
the sun. 

Yet, as one contemplates his triumphs, one 
finds oneself recurring in memory to the beautiful 
background of domestic quiet and stately dignity 
in which he was as much or more at home than 
in the public gaze. I can see him now in an old 
wide-awake and cloak —trudging off in the drizzle 
of an October morning to early service. I re- 
member how, at Hawarden in 1896, on one of the 
sad evenings after my father's death, I dined 
alone with him and one other guest, and with 
what beautiful consideration he talked quietly on 
about things in which he thought we should be 
interested — things that needed neither comment 
nor response, and all so naturally and easily, that 
one hardly realised the tender thoughtfulness of 
it all. 

And, last of all, I remember how I came one 
evening at a later date to dine at Hawarden, and 
was shown into a little half -lit ante-room next 
the dining-room. It was just at the beginning 
of his last illness, and he was suffering from dis- 
comfort and weakness. There on a sofa he sat, 
side by side with Mrs. Gladstone; they were sit- 
ting in silence, hand in hand, like two children, 
the old warrior and his devoted wife. It seemed 



64 Along the Road 

almost too sacred a thing to have seen; but it 
is not too sacred to record, for it seemed the 
one last perfect transfiguring touch of love and 
home. 



ROBERT BROWNING 

The published records of Robert Browning, for 
all their care and accuracy, fail to cast a light 
upon what is, after all, the central mystery of 
Browning's life — the fact that, somehow or other, 
as a figure and as a personality, he seems un- 
interesting. There was little, to the ordinary 
eye, that was salient or inspiring about his talk 
or his views of life. He had the power of merging 
himself, it would seem, in commonplace things in 
a commonplace way. He exhibited, of course, a 
thoroughly admirable and manly tone, optimistic, 
sociable, simple, straightforward. He never in- 
dulged his griefs, he had no petty vanity or spite, 
he was entirely wholesome-minded, sane, and 
reasonable. His talk, one would at least have 
thought, or his private letters, would have been 
picturesque, fanciful, humorous, and perceptive; 
and possibly in intimate tete-a-tete talk, which can 
hardly be photographed or recorded, this was so. 
But I confess to finding even his letters unin- 
spiring. They are long-winded, elaborate, un- 
graceful, not even spontaneous. 

T remember very well, as an undergraduate, 
s 65 



66 Along the Road 

going to meet him at breakfast. He was staying 
with Sir Sidney Colvin, at Trinity, in the early 
eighties. I was a devout reader and a whole- 
hearted worshipper of the poet; indeed, I was 
secretary of the then newly-founded Cambridge 
Browning Society; and with what tremulous awe 
and expectation I accepted the invitation, and 
climbed the turret stair which led to Sir Sidney's 
rooms, can be better imagined than told. The 
party consisted, I think, of undergraduates only, 
eight or ten in number. There came into the 
room a short, sturdy man, with silky and wavy 
white hair, a short beard and moustache, his 
cheeks shaven, of a fresh and sanguine com- 
plexion. We were presented to him one by one. 
He shook hands with quiet aplomb and self- 
possession, said a few words to me about my 
father, whose guest he had been more than once; 
and we sat down to breakfast. Our host, I re- 
member, skilfully turned the talk on to matters 
of ordinary literary interest. But the great man 
rose to no conversational fly. He was perfectly 
good-humoured, simple, and natural. He had no 
pontifical airs, he did not seem to feel bound to 
say witty or suggestive things, but neither was 
he in the least shy or embarrassed. He just 
talked away, readily and amusingly, as any well- 
informed, sensible man might talk. But we had, 
of course, expected that he would pontificate I 
He had a slightly foreign air, I remember think- 
ing, as if he were a diplomat, used to cosmopolitan 



Robert Browning 67 

society. But his simplicity, beautiful as it was, 
was not impressive, because there was nothing 
appealing or impulsive about it. It did not seem 
as if he were sparing himself, or holding forces 
in reserve, but as if he were a good-natured, 
almost bourgeois man, intelligent and good- 
humoured, and with no sense that he might be 
an object of interest to any one. There is a 
conversation recorded in the Life^ when he was 
being received with intense enthusiasm by the 
authorities and students of some Northern Uni- 
versity. Some one asked him what he felt about 
the applause and veneration he was receiving, and 
he said something to the effect that he had been 
waiting for it all his life. That does not seem 
in the least in character with his ordinary atti- 
tude. He did not seem to concern himself in 
earlier days with his own fame, to be either dis- 
appointed if it was withheld, or elated if it was 
showered upon him. He did, indeed, display 
some irritation with his critics when, in the 
period following the publication of The Ring 
and tJie Boole, he suffered some detraction at 
their hands. But as a rule he seems to have 
taken criticism, favourable or unfavourable, with 
equanimity, good-nature, and indifference. 

Of course, one is thankful in a way for this 
simplicity, in contrast to the self-conscious vanity 
from which even great poets like Wordsworth 
and Tennyson were not exempt. But if one com- 
pares Tennyson as a figure with Browning, there 



68 Along the Road 

IS no doubt that Tennyson had a splendour and 
a solemnity of mien and utterance which pro- 
duced upon his friends and contemporaries a 
sense of awful reverence and deference, which 
made him one of the stateliest and most impressive 
figures of his time. 

And yet the wonder is that when Browning 
took pen in hand to write poetry, the whole 
situation was utterly transfigured. In spite of 
certain whimsical tricks and bewildering man- 
nerisms, there came from that amazing brain and 
heart, not only a torrent of subtle and suggestive 
thought, but an acute and delicate delineation of 
the innermost mind of man, in words so beauti- 
ful, so concentrated, so masterly, that one can 
hardly conceive the process by which the thing 
was perceived, felt, arranged, selected, and finally 
presented. The amazing richness of sympathy, 
the marvellous intuition, the matchless range of 
it all, is a thing which is stupendous to con- 
template. For not only could he touch the stops 
of the sweetest, most personal, most delicate emo- 
tions, not only could he interpret Nature — a 
flower, a sunset, a star — with the most caress- 
ing fineness, but he could raise to his lips a 
great trumpet of noble emotion, and blow huge, 
melodious blasts upon it which made glad the 
heart of man. One can be not only enraptured 
by the sweetness of his touch, but carried olT 
one's feet in a sort of intoxication of hope and 

joy. 



Robert Browning 69 

" What 's life to me? 
Where'er I look is fire; where'er I listen 
Music; and where I tend, bliss evermore." 



With lines like that ringing in one's ears, one 
is bewildered as by the sudden telling of joyful 
news. It transfigures life to find a man who can 
look into it so deeply and so firmly, bringing 
back such treasure out of the rush and confusion 
of it all, and flinging it down so royally at the 
feet of those who toil on their way. 

And yet the sort of kindly and bluff simplicity 
which Browning exhibited in daily life is just the 
sort of quality about which there seems nothing 
adventurous or quixotic. One would have said 
that he was a man who enjoyed life in its simplest 
forms — walking, talking, dining-out, listening to 
music — so directly that he would not have time 
or taste for any raptures, and so equably that he 
would not feel the need of any far-off hope or 
promise to sustain him or console him. One does 
not see where it all came from, or where he got 
all that complexity and intricacy of experience 
from. It seemed as though he could not take 
any but the obvious and rational view of life, as 
though he valued the ordinary conventions and 
customs of society highly; and yet whenever it 
came to verse, the thought broke out into music, 
and the heart behind seemed all alive with pas- 
sion and beauty and irrational nobleness. Very 
possibly, if one had known him better, one might 



70 Along the Road 

have caught the accent of the great secrets that 
were beckoning and whispering in his mind; but 
the more that is revealed about his ordinary 
demeanour and the current of his days, the less 
there seems to reveal or to linger over. One sees 
his intense faculty of momentary enjoyment; but 
surely there can be no man of comparable great- 
ness, whose special gift, too, was an almost 
shattering force of expression combined with an 
exquisite delicacy of touch, of whom so few dicta 
are preserved? He seems to have been able to 
keep the two lives serenely and securely apart, 
and to talk and gossip good-humouredly and 
easily in the outer chambers, with this furnace 
of emotion and excitement roaring and raging 
within. It is not as if he had lived in remote 
dreams and incommunicable romance, far off in 
some untroubled and wistful region. His con- 
cern was with the very sight and sound and scent 
of life, a fact shown ever so clearly by the mar- 
vellous catalogues of miscellaneous and nonde- 
script objects which he crowds together on his 
pages. And one cannot make a greater mistake 
than by treating Browning, as he is often treated, 
as merely the poet of a devout kind of optimism. 
He is too often adopted as the prophet of vaguely 
intellectual and virtuous people, who, because 
they cannot see very far into life or unravel its 
confusions, think it as well to shout a sort of 
comprehensive Hallelujah over the good time 
coming. Browning's optimism did, no doubt, 



Robert Browning 71 

emerge triumphant over circumstance. He said 
once to a man who complained that he found life 
complicated and disheartening, that it had not 
been so to him; and, indeed, his zest for life and 
living was so great that he was not struck dumb 
and melancholy by any catastrophe, because there 
was still so much left that was worth doing and 
saying. But there is a great deal in Browning 
beside his optimism. He does not make a simple 
melody out of life, he scores and orchestrates it; 
and his own brave solution is made not exactly 
out of life, but in spite of it. 

But I find it very difficult to bring the two 
ends of the puzzle together. It may not be so 
with other readers of Browning, but it does seem 
to me that very little of that supreme and over- 
powering radiance, which gleams and flashes so 
prodigally and gloriously in his poetry, shone 
through into his life. He does not seem like a 
man who guarded a secret source of inspiration, 
but a man of small accomplishments, ordinary 
interests, and average views; and then one opens 
a volume of the lyrics, and the lightning flashes 
and the thunder rolls and answers, while all the 
while at any moment a glimpse of loveliness, a 
prospect of heavenly beauty, opens upon the view. 
And then in the front of that comes the quiet, 
burly figure that I remember, easy and unaffected, 
jingling the money in his pocket, not desirous 
of any confidences of intimate relations, just a 
comfortable citizen of the world. 



NEWMAN 

I HAVE been reading Mr. Ward's Life of Neivman, 
a book which, by its fine candour and high 
literary accomplishment, does credit both to the 
skill and the disinterestedness of the biographer. 
But it is somehow a deeply painful, almost T 
had said, a heartrending book ! One feels that it 
is like reading the life of an angel that has lost 
his way. One ends with an immense admiration 
for Newman's simplicity, sweetness, and stain- 
lessness of character; but there is something 
strangely ineffective, wistful, and melancholy 
about his life. One feels that he was generally 
being bullied by some one, or at all events feel- 
ing that he was being bullied, disapproved of, 
hampered, set aside, misunderstood. He was like 
a child in the masterful hands of ambitious 
diplomatists and ecclesiastical lobbyists, like 
Manning and Talbot, both of them effective, 
pushing, scheming men, essentially second-rate. 
The whole impression given of the Papal Court 
is disagreeable; it seems to have been manned 
by unintelligent time-servers, ignorant oppor- 
tunists, men who did not understand the pro- 

72 



Newman 73 

blems of the time, men singularly lacking in 
apostolic fervour, and even, one would say, in 
disinterested Christian qualities, men without the 
wisdom of the serpent but not without the ser- 
pent's venom. These fierce ultramontanes would 
never allow Newman to take a hand in their 
game, while they traded to the full on his great 
reputation. 

I remember once when I was staying at 
Hawarden, I heard Mr. Gladstone, talking about 
Manning, say that it must be always remembered 
that Manning was before all things a diplomatist; 
he added with great emphasis, '' when it was a 
question of policy, everything else had to give 
way — Plato, or the almanac, or truth itself I " — 
and as one reads the Life of Neivmany one feels 
that this is not an unjust judgment. 

But one ends by feeling a still greater respect 
for Newman from the very fact that he never did 
get involved in any of the intrigues that were spun 
about him; he was used, when he was wanted; 
but he was never wholly trusted, and never given 
an independent sphere of action. It is clear that 
he was an unpractical man; he never brought off 
any of his plans, such as the Roman Catholic 
University in Ireland, or the College which he 
devised for Oxford. He had a muddled habit of 
doing business ; he never seems to have been quite 
certain what he wanted, or to have made sure 
of his ground. He seems to have been almost 
deliberately allowed to make schemes for his own 



74 Along the Road 

amusement, yet never permitted to carry them 
out. One understands his depression, his help- 
lessness, his consciousness of his " do-nothing 
life," as he called it in a moment of bitterness. 

But what does come out very clearly, beside 
his weakness in practical things, is the strength 
and tenderness of his temperament. I never 
grasped clearly till I read this book what New- 
man really was; but I now seem to understand 
him. He was a poet, I believe, and an artist 
before everything. He had a high conception of 
moral beauty, but his adherence to Roman 
Catholicism was not primarily, I believe, an 
ecclesiastical matter. The Church of Rome ap- 
pealed to him emotionally and artistically, with 
its dim and venerable traditions, its august his- 
tory, its splendid associations, its ceremonial 
pomp, its roll of saints. The Church of England, 
with the vigorous liberalism of the Reformation 
dying down into Erastian and materialistic in- 
dolence, could not give him what he wanted. He 
desired something more ancient, more tender, 
more beautiful, more inspiring. I do not think 
that his intellectual power was very great. Car- 
lyle said, coarsely and stupidly, that Newman 
had the brains of a rabbit; but reading the Life 
has made me see what Carlyle meant. Newman 
was not a clear or a deep thinker; he did not 
understand philosophy, and he dreaded all mental 
speculation. He wanted rest, comfort, peace, 
beautiful dreams, old memories, far-reaching emo- 



Newman 75 

tions. He had a loj^ical mind, but he was at the 
mercj of superficial logic; his heart was con- 
vinced and his mind followed suit. 

What he did possess was a matchless and in- 
comparable power of expression. Everything that 
he wrote was soaked in personality. He had the 
power, which he and Ruskin alone possessed 
among the writers of the century, of thinking 
aloud in the most exquisite form. His writing 
is like a limpid stream, and he could give perfect 
form as he wrote to the tender, humorous, ardent, 
sweet qualities of his mind and nature. Whether 
it is a sermon, or a letter, or a memorandum, or 
a record, it is always the same — a sort of in- 
timate and lucid conversation, flowing equably 
and purely out of heart and mind alike. That was 
his supreme gift, his artistry ; the delicacy, the in- 
genuity, the studied unaffectedness, the perfume 
of all that he wrote. It is that which makes the 
Apologia so memorable a book, the power of wist- 
ful self-analysis, the sense that one is face to 
face with the very man himself in a kind of 
intimate tete-a-lefe. Newman could say exactly 
what lie meant and what he thought, and as he 
thought it. His mind moved exacth^ as fast as 
his pen ; and because the Apologia was written 
in tears, as he confessed, so one can hear the 
accent of sorrow in the tone of the writer. 

But there are many other things in the book 
which confirm this view of Newman. He said 
that the only thing he could write without any 



76 Along the Road 

trouble was poetry; and we know, too, from the 
Life, bow be loved music, and bow be suppressed 
bis taste for it for many years, out of some sort 
of ascetic self-denial. But be added tbat music 
was tbe only tbing tbat calmed and inspired bim 
witbout fail, and tbe only tbing wbich helped 
bim to write. We see, too, bow his friends gave 
bim a violin when be was over sixty, and how 
be delighted in playing it, hour by hour, in tbe 
Oratorian country bouse at Rednal, where there 
was no one to disturb. 

And then, too, there is the romantic affection 
which he bore to bis friends, and to the well- 
loved scenes of his life. He describes bow when 
he left Littlemore be kissed his bed and the 
mantelpiece of bis room. And one becomes aware 
of his constant tearfulness, bis agitated and emo- 
tional visits to places which be bad loved. What 
could be more moving than tbe account quoted 
of Newman's only visit to Littlemore twenty 
years after he bad left it? "I was passing by 
the church at Littlemore," wrote the eye-witness 
of tbe scene, " when I observed a man, very poorly 
dressed, leaning over tbe lych-gate, crying. He 
was to all appearance in great trouble. He was 
dressed in an old grey coat with the collar turned 
up, and bis hat pulled down over his face as if 
he wished to bide bis features." Tbat was New- 
man, returning to see bis old home! All this is 
strangely affecting, and testifies to the almost 
unbalanced sensitiveness and emotion of the man. 



Newman 77 

And then further one sees, running all through 
his life, the intense desire to be understood, loved, 
appreciated, praised. He was childlike in his 
horror of suspicion, of disapproval, of harshness. 
The success of the Apologia made all the dif- 
ference to his happiness, and his satisfaction with 
the fame that it gave him is naively enough ex- 
pressed. The reception of his Poems gave him 
deep satisfaction. The Cardinalate, one feels, 
was almost too deeply valued by him. It 
was not enough that he should be secretlj^ aware 
of the purity of his motives, the devotion of his 
life: it Avas a necessity to him that others should 
know it, admit it, appreciate it. He wanted 
honour, affection, and recognition. He could not 
endure in silence; he had the natural egotism of 
the artist; he wanted to tell his own story, to 
explain his own thoughts, to express his own 
convictions. In one sense he shrank from doing 
this, but what he really dreaded was criticism 
and discredit. No one can read the Apologia 
without feeling that the writer tells his tale with 
delight and interest; and it is the wistful appeal 
for approval and esteem and sympathy which 
makes the book what it is. 

I do not say that Newman was not a man of 
intense spiritual ardour: he was a moralist to 
the inmost fibre of his being; but so were Ruskin, 
Carlyle, and Tennyson; and it is with these that 
Newman is to be reckoned, and not with philo- 
sophers, prelates, and ecclesiastical politicians. 



78 Along the Road 

Of course, his temperament condemned him to 
great suffering; and the impression left by the 
Life is mainly that of suffering, in spite of his 
occasional and tardy triumphs. The time be- 
tween his joining the Church of Rome and the 
publication of the Apologia gives one the impres- 
sion that he was then a thoroughly disheartened 
and dreary man, sinking deeper and deeper into 
indolent despondency, as his attempts to do some 
work for the Church failed one by one. The sun- 
shine comes back at the end, but the pathos of 
the intervening years is great; and the portraits 
show this very clearly, as the rather prim and 
hard features of the Anglican period lapse into 
a sad, helpless, and rueful expression, with the 
lines of weariness, hypochondria, and disappoint- 
ment graving themselves deeply on his face. It 
is very interesting to see how much Newman 
thought, in his sad days, about his health, how 
afraid he was of paralysis, how much he lived 
under a premonition of death; and how all that 
uneasy misery cleared off when he found himself 
famous and honoured. 

But of all the melancholy scenes of the book, 
the saddest is the visit to Keble in 1SG5, where 
Newman met Pusey. He had much desired to 
see Keble, but he could not bear the idea of meet- 
ing Pusey. He went, however, and owing to some 
misunderstanding Pusey appeared also. It was 
twentj^ years since they had met. When New- 
man arrived at the door, Keble was standing in 



Newman 79 

the porch. They did not even recognise each 
other, and Newman actually produced his card! 
Keble was very much agitated at the fact that 
Pusey was in the house, and said he must go 
and prepare him for the meeting. When New- 
man went in, he found Pusey in the study, shrink- 
ing back, as he says he himself would have done. 
He was startled, pained, and grieved by Pusey 's 
appearance, and was distressed by the way that 
Pusey stared at him, and by the ^' condescending " 
manner in which he spoke. They had a talk and 
dined together, and Newman said that it was a 
heavy pain to think that they were three old 
friends, meeting after twenty years, ^^ without a 
common cause, or free outspoken thought — kind 
indeed, but subdued and antagonistic in their 
language to each other." Keble was delightful, 
Newman said, though he was deaf, with impaired 
speech, and slow of thought; and he adds that 
Keble displayed much sympathy and interest 
towards himself, but very little towards Pusey. 

That seems to me a simply tragical meeting, 
and they never met again, though Keble wrote 
afterwards to Newman, saying, " When shall we 
three meet again? . . . when the hurly-burly 's 
done." 

It is indeed a melancholy thought. Here were 
three men, the closest possible friends, who had 
championed a great cause together, and restored 
vitality to the Church of England. Newman said 
that he was aware that as far as regarded their 



8o Along the Road 

faith, Keble aud Pusey agreed with him exactly 
on every point but one — the submission to the 
authorit}^ of Rome. And jet for all the old days 
of friendship, and for all their unity of faith, they 
were suspicious, hostile, utterly separated. It is 
hard not to feel that there is something tragically 
amiss in all this. If the old friendship had just 
shone through, touched with sadness at the in- 
evitable separation; if they could have talked 
and smiled and even wept together, it would 
surely have been more Christian, more human 
than this harsh mistrust. One feels the Gospel of 
brotherly love must have been somehow strangely 
misapprehended if it could not for once bring the 
three old comrades' hearts together. Our Lord 
indeed foresaw the dividing foice of Christianity; 
but one feels that when He spoke of a man's foes 
being those of his own household. He was surely 
speaking of the conflict between the Faith and 
Paganism, and not of disunion between devout 
and sincere Christians ! 

And it is this finally which casts a shadow 
over the whole book, because it reveals the awful 
gulf of sectarianism, the emphasis on points of 
difference, the dreadful animosity kindled by 
faith diversely interpreted and held. As systems, 
doctrines. Churches develop, it seems as if the 
only effect could be to plunge Christians deeper 
and deeper into mutual hostility and further 
away from the purpose and design of Christ. It 
seems as though the Faith had evoked and en- 



Newman 8i 

listed the stubbornness and self-assurance and 
the evil tempers of political partisanship, and as 
though the simplicity and loving-kindness of the 
Gospel message were gone past recovery. And 
thus, though one is strangely drawn to Newman 
himself, because one discerns in him an affection 
which did somehow outlast and overtop all con- 
troversy and bewildered disunion, one is painfully 
struck with the materialism, the secularity, the 
self-seeking of ecclesiastical politics, and one 
closes the book with a sigh. 

6 



AKCHIPPUS 

I SAT in my stall in the College chapel listening 
to the lesson, read by a boyish reader from the 
gilded eagle lectern. The crimson hangings of 
the sanctuary filled the air with colour, the golden 
organ-pipes gleamed above; the light came richly 
in through the stained glass, and- lost itself in 
the gloom of the dark, caryed roof. The rows of 
surpliced figures sat still and silent, listening or 
not listening, dreaming of things before and b(^- 
liind, old adyentures, all they meant to do and 
be, the thought perhaps taking on a gentler tinge 
from the ancient beauty of the place. 

Such homely adyice, too, it all was! — advice 
to husbands, wives, children, masters, servants, 
shrewd enough and kindly; not losing sight of 
daily life and its interests, and vet keeping in 
view something noble and beautiful behind it all, 
the unseen greatness of life, so easily forgotten. 

My eyes strayed further down the page of the 
Bible T held in mj hand. T do not know any- 
thing more touching, more inspiring than the 
little personal messages and counsels sent to in- 
dividual saints: mere names most of them! How 

82 



Archippus 83 

little St. Paul himself dreamed, as he wrote in 
l>risoii, ill discomfort and anxiety, what would 
become of his letters! After advice faithfully 
given, his mind would pass to the remembered 
faces of his friends, simple people enough, and 
he would fill his page with greetings and words 
of love. Those names of men and women bring 
the whole thing down on to such a tender and 
human plane, speak with such a directness of love 
and affection. 

And they, too, who received the messages, if 
they could have pictured such a place as this 
chapel, its richness, its solemnity, what would 
they have felt at hearing their homely names 
thus read aloud, and the words of counsel and 
love addressed to them? — and read, too, not in 
one, but in thousands of great churches, which 
to see would have been to them almost like a 
vision of the courts of heaven, with the organ 
music rolling under the vaulted roofs. Fame? 
Yes, a kind of fame; nothing known of them, 
nothing certain about them, like a name on a 
headstone in a place of graves, with a date and 
some faint record of virtues and graces — all else 
forgotten. 

Archippus! He is mentioned twice in Scrip- 
ture ; he is a " fellow-soldier " in the Epistle to 
Philemon; and here he has a direct enough mes- 
sage. " And say to Archippus, Take heed to the 
ministry which thou hast received in the Lord, 
that thou fulfil it." That was to be his business. 



84 Along the Road 

Yet we know nothing of him, of his past or his 
future; there is a faint old story of his martyr- 
dom, possibly true enough ; but w^hat the ministry 
was and how he executed it, of that we know 
nothing. 

I sometimes wish that our splendid version of 
the Bible had not won from use and ceremony 
and from the very veneration paid it, quite so 
solemn and stately a sound. As an epistle is 
translated, with its "thou" and "ye," it has the 
air of a princely document, such as a great bisho]) 
might w^rite from his magnificence to other stately 
persons. When St. Paul speaks of the Epistle 
to the Oolossians being read to the Church at 
Laodicea, and the epistle to the Laodiceans being 
read to the Church at Colossae, one thinks of 
some great ceremonial, with a parchment loudly 
recited in a great building thronged with wor- 
shippers. One forgets how homely it all was in 
reality. It is a letter really to be read at a meet- 
ing of very ordinary folk in a poor room, a letter 
such as a mission-teacher might write to a few 
old friends. And one forgets, too, the novelty of 
it all. Kow that Christianity has taken a place 
among the forces of the world, and is mixed up 
with so much that is powerful and conventional 
and respectable, one forgets how new, how sus- 
picious, how unconventional, how socialistic shall 
we say, it all seemed — it was a handful of work- 
ing people comforting themselves with a message 
of utterly new and unexpected things. It had 



Archippus 85 

none of the weight of the world behind it; it 
broke awaj from all received ideas and prejudices. 
These people who got this letter, with its advice 
and words of love, were no doubt looked upon 
by neighbours as fanatical, discontented, fantastic 
persons, who could not take life for granted m 
tlie old comfortable way, but must throw them- 
selves into a wild, radical, restless fancy, taught 
them by an insignificant, vehement, fiery-tem- 
pered, wandering preacher, who came from no 
one knew where, and was now justly in prison 
for stirring up strife. Colossse was a decaying 
town, its trade vanishing, its old importance 
gone; yet how its easy-going, sensible citizens 
must have desi)ised the new ideas that had seized 
upon a few fanciful folk; how they must have 
shaken their heads over the movement and mis- 
trusted it ! The people who took it up were 
doing, they felt, an unpopular and unpractical 
thing, and no good could come of it! That is 
how we must look at it all. Christianity was 
not then a beneficent, well-endowed, familiar 
power, but something new, disturbing, danger- 
ous. I daresay the Christians at Colossse had a 
hard time of it, and needed all the affection and 
advice which St. Paul could give them! 

It is not only a comforting letter — St. Paul 
was very anxious about a certain kind of teach- 
ing, it is hard to say exactly what, which seemed 
to be mixing itself ui> with the faith. He is 
severe enough about that. It is not the letter 



S6 Along the Road 

of a man who is wholly Ksatisfied. Something is 
very wrong; and neither can we feel that all the 
very plain advice to husbands and wives, masters 
and servants, came loosely out of St. Paul's mind. 
He must have heard of misdoings and misunder- 
standings. The seed was not growing up happily 
and strongly; there were weeds in abundance, 
and they must be rooted up. But the old affec- 
tions come out at the end; and this is perhaps 
the secret of the intensity of St. Paul's writings ; 
the large heart that took men and women in so 
readily, and never forgot them. He never con- 
doned what was amiss; he wrote in anger, grief, 
and indignation ; but at the end, the recollections 
of well-known faces and gestures and friendly 
words croAvd in upon him, and the last words 
are always words of personal love. 

It is very wonderful all this — more wonderful 
than we often allow ourselves to believe, that 
these old messages and greetings should stand 
out to-day with such an absolute freshness, and 
touch so many hearts even now. What St. Paul 
says to Archippus he says to many. Archippus 
had found a work for which he was suited. He 
must have grown a little tired of it, perha])s, 
when the novelty and excitement had worn off. 
St. Paul cannot feel perfectly sure of him, or he 
would not have sent him so plain a message. He 
had gifts; was he using them? 

We need not apply the words too technically 
to an office or a priesthood; the word used for 



Archippus 87 

ministry means a service. It was probably a 
very informal thing: a duty of speech, of care 
for poorer Christians, of keeping a congregation 
together. He had some sort of influence with 
other people no doubt, a kindly manner, an 
affectionate heart, some power of expressing what 
he felt. Probably he had some business of his 
own ; he was a shopman, perhaps, a worker of 
some kind; yet he was worthy to be St. Paul's 
fellow-soldier, if not now, at all events later, when 
the little anxious message had done its work. 

And so the figure of Archippus gleams out 
faintly for an instant on the background of the 
past; a man who had a work to do, and could 
do it, but was careless; and yet on whom the 
reproof had its effect. He is a tyjje of thousands 
of lives, that do their work in their own little 
circle, with no great reward, no escape out of 
obscurity; and yet for all that Archippus has 
written his name upon the world, as many great 
generals and judges and statesmen have not 
written it, by what we strangely call chance. 
Reckon the chances, so to speak, that a letter 
written from prison, and sent by faithful hands 
over land and sea, to a knot of old friends, would 
have perished utterly out of the records of the 
world ! It is something more than chance which 
has preserved it, and brought it to pass that it 
should be read, as I heard it to-day, through the 
length and breadth of a land like our own, nearly 
twentv centuries after. 



88 Along the Road 

I think that if we could put some thoughts like 
these more often into our minds when we hear 
the Bible read in church, we should be more in- 
terested, more amazed, more moved by the extra- 
ordinary nature of it all. Yet we take it all 
dully as a matter of course; perhaps we try to 
give it a demure attention, and the name of 
Archippus and the work he had to do just falls 
like a ripple on minds full of plans and schemes 
and hopes and interests, not mingling with them, 
and certainly not changing them! Yet it needs 
no great exercise of the imagination to think of 
these things. They are in a score of books; we 
have but to ask ourselves a question or two, and 
we are back in the dark past, with Christian 
light stealing into a dim world by a hundred 
channels, confirming the hopes of thousands of 
hearts, bringing them just the one thing needed 
to put the cares of the world in their place, 
whispering a secret of life and immortality. The 
world is not soon changed; life and the cares of 
life press heavily on most of us; and then there 
comes a man sent from God, like St. Paul, and 
shows that life is all knit together by invisible 
chains from the friends and neighbours whom we 
know so well, to the unseen persons who are fear- 
ing and hoping as we are fearing and hoping; 
and thus it passes back into the old records, and 
show^s us the long procession of humanity moving 
through the years, straining their e^^es and ears 
for the light and sound of the message; and then 



Archippus 



S\ 



the thoughts and affections that bind us all to- 
gether pass still further and deeper into the 
darkness, to find their home in the heart of 
God. 



KEATS 

I BOUGHT at a bookstall a few days ago, before 
a long journey, a volume of Keats's poems, and 
read it through from end to end. Was there 
ever such an astonishing performance? That a 
man who died, after a long period of illness, at 
the age of twenty-five, should produce such a body 
of work, so much of it of the very finest and 
jnirest quality, is surely an absolutely unique 
phenomenon I 

There is much to be said for devouring a poet 
whole like this. Of course, the right way to read 
poetry as a rule is to sip it leisurely, to savour 
it, to turn it over and over in the mind, to learn 
it by heart. Thus one gets at the beauty of the 
word and the phrase. 

But if one is very familiar with a poet, it is 
a good thing occasionally to gallop through his 
works at a sitting. One gets a wholly different 
view of him. It is like flashing through a scene 
in a motor which one has explored only on foot. 
I motored the other day through some country 
with which I was familiar as a child, where I 
had loitered with my nurse in a slow, childish 

90 



Keats 91 

caravan. It was a great revelation. In memory 
I saw the little walks we took, in a series of 
vignettes, but the whole lie of the landscape was 
unfamiliar. Flying through it in a motor, I saw 
all sorts of unsuspected connections and near- 
nesses. What had seemed to me tracts of vast 
and mysterious extent, lying between the range 
of two familiar walks, resolved themselves into 
little spinneys and belts of trees just dividing 
road from road. What had appeared to me to 
be two perfectly distinct forests were now 
revealed as one and the same narrow belt of 
woodland. 

Thus in reading a poet quickly from end to 
end, one sees that the lyrics and odes which 
appeared to be so sharply differentiated are but 
as separate flowers growing on the same plant. 
One realises, too, the connection with earlier and 
later poets, the genealogy of genius. I had never 
seen before how closely allied Keats was, in 
" Hyperion," to Milton — and with a shock of 
surprise I saw what a prodigious effect Keats 
had had upon two subsequent poets so unlike as 
Tenuj'son and William Morris. Perhaps there is 
a little loss of mystery and distance, but that is 
amply compensated for by the sense of unity and 
personality which one gains. 

And, after all, the mystery is as great as ever. 
How did the marvellous boy with his bourgeois 
surroundings, his very inferior friends, the un- 
lovely suburban atmosphere which hangs even 



92 Along the Road 

about his splendid letters — how did he manage 
to soar above it all, to dream such remote and 
delicate dreams? More marvellous still, how did 
he contrive to express it all ? It makes one wonder 
if there is not some secret pre-existence about the 
human spirit, when one sees a boy using words 
with this incredible ease and felicity, with no 
practise behind him, no apprenticeship, no labour, 
no training. The imaginative part of it is not 
so marvellous — indeed, " Endymion " reveals a 
certain poverty of imagination — it is the technical 
skill of craftsmanship, the instinctive art, which 
is so utterly bewildering! 

The little book which I read had gathered up 
into it all the fragments and chips out of the 
poet's workshop, the doggerel he spun off in his 
letters, the dreadful play of " Otho," the simply 
appalling " Cap and Bells," that heartrending 
mixture of fantastic nonsense and vulgar hu- 
mour. I do not think these things ought to be 
reprinted, because people of uncritical minds get 
muddled into thinking that it is all equally good. 
I cannot help feeling the sense of horror and 
shame which the poet himself would have writhed 
under, at the inclusion of these trivial and abject 
bits of writing into one and the same volume. 
But I was glad that they were there for my own 
sake, because they showed what a power of self- 
criticism Keats had; and, moreover, they all cast 
a certain light upon his mind — its exuberance, its 
gaiety, its abandon. 



Keats 93 

The life which it reveals is a very tragic one. 
There can be no doubt that Keats soAved the 
seeds of consumi^tion by his devoted tendance of 
his invalid brother, at a time when it was not 
realised how contagious the malady was ; and he 
developed it by overtiring himself on his long 
walking tour, in which he disregarded all rules 
of diet and health. Q'hen there comes in his 
frantic passion for a commonplace and rather 
inferior girl — somewhat of a minx, if the truth 
must be told ; and there follows the horrible 
despair of the last voyage, and the terrible 
struggle with death in the high house near the 
noisy piazza in Rome, with all the tortures of 
pent-up imagination and frenzied love to contend 
with; and so he passes into the unknown, very 
gallantly at last. 

If one cares very much for poetry and the 
beauty of thought and word, it is tempting to 
lose oneself in a sad rebellion at the waste, the 
ruthless snapping of so golden a thread of life 
as this. But it must somehow be a very faithless 
misunderstanding of the meaning of life, if one 
permits oneself so to impugn its tragedies. If we 
believe in immortality, if we trust that experi- 
ence is somehow proportioned to the individual 
need, we may shudder perhaps at the sharpness 
of death ; we may feel with Dr. Johnson that after 
all it is a sad thing for a man to lie down and 
die; but we must go on to believe that there is 
a very wonderful secret involved in so wild and 



94 Along the Road 

mournful a prelude. One must be prepared to 
think of Keats as rejoicing in bis martyrdom, tbe 
fiery corner once turned, and as thus gaining for 
bis spirit a joy which could be won in no easier 
fashion. 

But this is all in a region of faith and hope; 
let us interrogate ourselves closely as to what it 
is that Keats and such as Keats do for the world. 
What is the meaning of this treasure of fame 
and gratitude heaped by mankind on such a brief 
life? Keats's songs go on being reprinted, his life 
is written over and over again, the most trivial 
of his letters are jealously edited, the most trifling 
records are anxiously ransacked, to catch one 
glimpse of him from the oblivious past. What 
would the great personages of the day — the dukes, 
the politicians, the soldiers, the courtiers — have 
felt, if they could have certainly foreseen that 
when their achievements and progresses and con- 
versations had been consigned to blank indif- 
ference and darkness, the world would still have 
been greedy to hear the meanest gossip about the 
consumptive medical student, sprung from the 
livery-stable, with a taste for writing verse? 

And what is the meaning of the extraordinary 
fact? Why does the world cling so tenderly and 
anxiously to the memory of its writers, to whom 
it found no time to attend when they rose like 
a star in the night, and take so little interest 
in the personality of those whom at the time it 
envied and respected? There must be something 



Keats 95 

in imagination and expressive art which is very 
dear to the heart of the world. It is surely that 
the spirit of humanity is most deeply concerned 
in finding, if it can, some refuge for its wearied 
self from the harsh experience of the world? 
However much the selfish materialist may deride 
the eager pursuit of beauty as a dallying with 
sentiment and emotion, yet the sense of the world 
is ultimately on the side of emotion, and in favour 
of all who can show us how to see and how to feel. 
^' Turn away mine eyes, lest they behold vanity," 
said the Psalmist ; and a poet like St. Augustine, 
after an exquisite apologue on the beauty of light, 
" sliding by me in unnumbered guises," can only 
end by praying that he may be delivered from its 
seductions. But even though one cannot rest in 
the beauty of forms and colours, yet the more 
that one looks into the heart of great moralists 
like St. Francis of Assisi, the more one realises 
that they did not see righteousness in the guise 
of a strict tyrant, but as a power so utterly 
beautiful that, having once seen it, one could 
never wholly lose the love of it. 

It is there, I believe, that the secret lies ; that the 
soul must pass on through what seems brilliant 
and charming to the love of what is true and pure, 
until it can say, as Wordsworth said of duty ; 

" Stern law^ver! Thou yet dost wear 
Thy godhead's most benignant grace; 
Nor know we anything so fair 
As is the smile upon thy face." 



RODDY 

Only a clog, after all ! Yes, only the one member 
of the household who was never sick or sorry, 
who was always ready for play or for companion- 
ship, never resented anything, only claimed love; 
who, if he was punished, never thought any- 
thing but forgiveness, never lost patience, was 
never injured or vexed; if one trod upon him by 
accident, was sure that one did it for the best, and 
came to be pardoned; who saw one depart with 
sorrow and welcomed one back with overwhelm- 
ing joy. That is what it is to be only a dog! 

When Roddy came to us, a collie puppy, six 
years ago, he had been roughly trained, and could 
not believe at first that we meant him well; but 
in six months he was the darling of the place, 
with his hazel eyes, so full of expression, his 
silky, brown hair, his wavy tail. He learned end- 
less tricks, and was as anxious to make out what 
was wanted of him as a child could be, and as 
proud of showing oif. He learned one or two 
things that I never could comprehend, such as 
distinguishing between the right and left hand, 
however much one interlaced the fingers; and I 

96 



Roddy 97 

never saw a dog so perfectly obedient. He made 
friends with cats and kittens, fowls and pigeons, 
and even with the peacock — his only grief was 
if any of them were taken more notice of than 
himself. Then he pulled one's coat or licked one's 
hand, and was overjoyed to be restored to favour. 
He was a sensitive dog and extremely timid. 
There were places in the roads all about, which 
he would never pass, because he had once had 
encounters with strange dogs there. He slipped 
off, took a circuit, and joined one again, apolo- 
gising for his absence. There was a cottage gate 
close by, where he once, when walking with me, 
put his head in, and was greeted with a bark 
let off straight in his face, like a peal of thunder, 
from a chained retriever, just round the palings. 
He came up to me, ])ale under his coat and 
shuddering, with a look of horror at a world 
where such terrors could be. There was even a 
farmyard from which he had fled in hot haste, 
pursued by an elderly hen. 

At one time he took to going off for a few days 
at a time. He made friends, we thought, with a 
family at a farm a little way off, and it amused 
him to pay visits. But my sister sewed round 
his neck a letter, in a canvas case, addressed " To 
the people at the house where he goes," and the 
next time he went off, he came back in a twin- 
kling. ^\e could never make out that he poached 
or hunted, but he did ramble in the woods, no 
doubt, especially with a naughty little mongrel, 



98 Along the Road 

who lived hi a hutch in the stable-yard. So after 
this was discovered, Toby went out for his run 
in the morning, while Roddy was chained up, and 
then Roddy was free for the day. 

And so the happy life went on, year by year. 
Joy and sorrow alike came to the house, passed 
tlirough it, left their mark on all but Roddy. He 
alone knew nothing of it all ; and in days of grief 
and unhappiness, it was a relief that his horizon 
at least was unclouded, that he required his plate 
to be filled, barked gently at closed doors, pleaded 
for his walk. How often, in days of ill-health, 
have T watched him lie at my feet, chin on carpet, 
just following every motion with half-open, up- 
turned eye, ready to spring into life at a word, 
or resigning himself to slumber with a happy sigh. 

One day, a month ago, he slipped off at night- 
fall. The next day he was seen by the miller, 
trotting demurely along the road; and that is 
the last we know of him. 

Now, I will not here be sentimental over what 
has happened. Sentiment is the exaggeration of 
things that are hardly sad, for the luxury of 
pathos. But there is no luxury here. One simply 
misses Roddy at every turn. I come back after 
an absence, and he does not come scampering out 
with a joyous outcry. His plate is put away on 
the shelf. His chain rusts in the stable. Yet as 
I go out to walk, I glance round for him, check 
his name on my lips, and at the covert edge turn 
round to see if he is following. 



Roddy 99 

What has happened to him? Alas, T have little 
doubt. I could almost bear to think he had been 
kidnapped, because, wherever he is, he will love 
and be loved, tliough perhaps a dim wonder may 
trouble his brain as to what has become of his 
old friends. 

But all round us game is carefully preserved: 
it is the time when the young pheasants are about, 
when keepers are watchful and merciless. I think 
of him as slipping into the wood. A rabbit bolts 
from the fern and pops in at a sandy hole under 
the bank. The chase is irresistible, and Eoddy 
sets to work digging in the soft soil, so intent 
that he does not see the keeper approach through 
the bracken. The gun is cautiously lifted. 

Well, I hope that, if it had to be, the shot did 
its work. He lies bewildered, quivering; perhaps 
a little blood trickles from the hazel eye, sur- 
prised and faint at the last passage; the sandy 
paws twitch and are still. Then comes the speedy 
burial, and the pretty brown limbs, so active an 
hour ago, huddled limply together . . . earth to 
earth. Roddy lies in the woodland he has loved, 
and the star peeps over the covert edge; soon 
the rain drips upon the mound, where the tangled 
hair and mouldering bones settle down for the 
last long sleep. 

I suppose no one is to blame; a keeper but 
obeys his orders, and a poaching dog is a nuisance, 
so all the love and sweet service are swept awaj' 
that a few sportsmen may shoot a rabbit or two 



100 Along the Road 

more, and that the bag may be fuller. There must 
be something wrong with the system that brings 
that to pass, though it is hard to disentangle! 

One ought not to keep dogs at all, I think. 
One can't explain to them the strange and brutal 
ways of men, outside the charmed circle of gentle 
words and caresses. And they leave such a ga]), 
such a silence, such a sorrowful ache of heart! 
A dozen times I stop, as I pace to and fro, re- 
membering how Roddy came bounding through 
the high-seeded grass. A dozen times I stand and 
look, listen and hope in vain, by open door and 
clicking garden-latch, by flower-border and sunny 
lawn, where Roddy comes again no more. 



THE FACE OF DEATH 

I WAS looking through an old diary to-day, when 
I came upon the entry of an experience that befel 
me in Switzerland a good many years ago. It 
was nothing less than being face to face, for some 
twenty minutes, not with the possibility but with 
the certainty of death. I think it may interest 
others to know what such an experience is like 
from the inside. I will just tell the story as 
simply and plainly as I can. The entry is so 
full — it was made on the following day — that I 
am adding no details; in fact, there are certain 
unnecessary points which I shall omit. 

I was staying at the Bel Alp in August, 1896, 
with a friend, Herbert Tatham, who has since, 
strange and sad to say, lost his life in the Alps. 
We were doing a good deal of climbing, and were 
in full training. I must add that a week or two 
before there had been a fatal accident at the 
same place; an elderly man, a lawyer I think, 
whose name I have forgotten, lost his footing on 
a steep rocky ridge not far from the hotel, and 
was killed by the fall. 

It was just at the end of our stay. We had 

lOI 



102 Along the Road 

got up early one morning and had climbed the 
Unter-bachhorn, a little rock peak not very far 
from the hotel. It was not a difficult climb. The 
day was exquisitely fine, and we were in higli 
spirits. We left the rocks to cross the Unter- 
bachhorn glacier, below which there was nothing 
but grass slopes. The glacier is a very smooth 
one, with no visible crevasses; just a surface of 
slightly undulating snow and ice, but at a steep 
angle. We were still roped, Clemens Kuppen, the 
guide, in front, I came next, and Tatham was 
behind. The snow was a little soft. We were 
going at a good pace, when I saw by the marks 
on the glacier, to left and right, that we were 
crossing a concealed crevasse. At the same in- 
stant the snow gave way under my foot. I gave 
a spring, but trod short of the other side, and 
swung down into the cavity like a sack. My first 
thought was one of amusement, and I expected 
to be jerked out in an instant. When the snow 
that came down with me had fallen past me, I 
looked about to see where I was. I was hanging 
at the very top of a huge wide blue crevasse, as 
though I were dangling at the very summit of 
the vaulting of a cathedral. I could see by the 
rather dim light that the crevasse stretched a 
long way — perhaps eighty yards — to my left, and 
not very far to my right. There were great ice- 
bridges spanning the gulf, perhaps ten feet below 
me, but to my left and right — and there were 
none immediately^ beneath. The upper part of 



The Face of Death 103 

the crevasse was all a delicate blue colour, but 
it ran down to a black fathomless gulf, with an 
unseen stream roaring below. I made desperate 
efforts to lodge my back against one side and 
my feet against the other, but the crevasse was 
too wide and sloped away from me, and the ice 
was very hard and smooth. I could not get a 
hold or a purchase of any kind. I tried to dig 
my pointed stick in, but the surface was too hard. 
These exertions were very Ic^borious, and, sus- 
pended as I was by the rope under my arms, I 
felt I could not persevere long. 

I was hanging with my head about four or five 
feet below the edge, and the guide hauled me up 
to within a foot or two from the top, but I could 
not reach the other side. Moreover, the ice 
against which I was drawn overhung, so that 
every tug jammed me against it. 

The guide shouted to Tatham to cross the 
crevasse. I heard him jump over, and a good 
deal of snow fell on me. They then both pulled. 
My left arm, unfortunately, was caught between 
the two lengths of rope. It was instantly numbed, 
and was drawn up against the overhanging ice, 
so that I thought it would break. The rope round 
me kept tightening as they pulled. I heard the 
guide groan as he tugged; they shouted to me at 
intervals that it would be all right in a moment. 

Then suddenly, without any warning, I became 
horribly faint. My knee, which I had jammed 
against the ice, slipped, and I swung down sev- 



104. Along the Road 

eral feet. Again I was pulled up, again I got 
my knee against the ice; again it slipped, and 
I swung down. This happened four or five times. 

Then thej desisted for a moment, and Tatham, 
coming nearer the edge, cut away the lip of the 
crevasse with his axe. The snow fell upon my 
upturned face, some of it into my mouth, which 
refreshed me. But whether it was that the snow 
filled up the space between my shirt and coat, or 
whether the rope was tightened, I do not know; 
but now my right hand became numb. My cap 
fell off, and I could see my hand, which was on 
a level with my face, grow white and rigid, and 
the stick fell from it without my being able to 
retain it in my stiffened fingers; and I then be- 
came aware that I was strangling. I shouted 
out to Tatham that this was the case, but either 
he did not hear me properly or could not get 
the guide to understand, for the rope kept on 
tightening. The danger, I afterwards learned, 
w^as that they dared not go too near to the lip 
of the crevasse, which was thin and brittle, for 
if one of them had slipped in, the other could 
not have sustained two of us, and we must all 
have inevitably fallen to the bottom. 

Suddenly it dawned upon me that I was 
doomed. I saw that I should either die by 
strangulation, or that I should lose conscious- 
ness and slip through the rope, which was rising 
higher and higher towards my arms. The strange 
thing was that I had no sense of fear, only a 



The Face of Death 105 

dim wonder as to how I should die, and whether 
the fall would kill me at once. I had no edifying 
thoughts. I did not review my past life or my 
many failings. I wondered that a second fatal 
accident should happen so soon in the same place, 
thought a little of my relations, and of Eton, 
where I was a master, wondered who would suc- 
ceed to my boarding-house, and how my pupils 
would be arranged for. I remember, too, specula- 
ting what death would be like. But I was now 
rapidly becoming unconscious, with the veins in 
my head beating like hammers, and I heard a 
horrible snoring sound in my ears, which I dimly 
understood to be my own labouring breath. Open- 
ing my eyes, which I had shut, I saw the chasm 
all full of my floating breath. All this time I 
did not know what they were doing, when sud- 
denly a shower of ice and snow fell on me and 
around me. Then there was a silence. I tried 
feebly to put my foot out again to the side, but 
could not hardly move it. Then I think I did 
become unconscious for a moment, my last 
thought being a sort of anxious longing to get 
the thing over as soon as possible. 

I did not know and did not care what they 
were doing above me, as I have said, if, indeed, 
I was aware of anything but failing life and 
swimming darkness; when suddenly the beating 
in my head relaxed, and I knew that I was still 
alive. There came a steady strain and a jerk; 
I was drawn out of the chasm, and saw the 



io6 Along the Road 

glacier and the plain beyond, and felt the sun. 
I saw the two below me pulling desperately at 
the ropes. I contrived to put my foot upon the 
edge behind me and give a thrust, and next 
minute I came out and fell prostrate on the ice. 
The guide lost his own balance, and fell over on 
his face at the sudden relaxing of the strain. 

Then came the oddest experience of all. I was 
not for a minute or two conscious of any relief 
of mind or gladness; I had a sense of painfully 
reviving energy, as of one awakened from sleep, 
and indeed a half-wish that I had not been re- 
called to life, as though interrupted in a nearly 
completed task. I saw, too, by the pallor of my 
friend and by the childlike emotion of the guide, 
how far worse it had been for them than for me. 
The guide moaned and shed tears, embraced me 
and laid his cheek to mine, held me at arm's 
length, and embraced me again. I found that 
he had run a great risk to save me; he had come 
close to the edge, and hewed it all away with 
his axe ; w^ithout this I could not have been saved, 
and a fracture of the ice or a slip would have 
been the end of all three of us. I was stiff and 
bruised, my hands very much cut from the edge 
of the ice, my knees black and blue; and I car- 
ried the pattern of the rope stamped on my back 
for some weeks. I suppose that about twenty 
minutes in all had elapsed since my fall. I did 
not feel shaken, though thirsty and languid; but 
I addressed the guide as Felix — the name of a 



The Face of Death 107 

former guide — for a minute or two; and in five 
minutes we were descending the glacier home- 
wards. The time had not seemed at all long to 
me; and, as I have said, I had no touch of pain, 
only faintness and discomfort, and no sense either 
of dread or fear. It only gradually came upon 
me what I had escaped. 

I was feverish and uncomfortable in the even- 
ing, but slept sound without any dreams; and I 
have never been able to trace any evil effects or 
any loss of nerve to the incident. I suppose that 
the whole thing was so brief and painless that 
the nerves really did suffer no particular shock. 
The cuts on my hands healed with quite incredible 
rapidity, owing, I was told, to the untainted 
material — the purest ice — with which the wounds 
were inflicted. I remember that Clemens came 
the next day to see me, and told Tatham that 
he had kept waking in nightmare and agita- 
tion all the succeeding night, " in fear for the 
lieber Herr, Erzbischofsohn, my friend, whom I 
love." 

That is the story of my taste of death. The 
strange thing about it to me was its utter un- 
likeness to anything that I should have imagined 
such an experience to be, the simplicity of it, the 
commonplace thoughts that came to me, the en- 
tire absence of any tragic, or melodramatic, or 
indeed emotional elements. I should have sup- 
posed, indeed, that it would have been all emo- 
tion; but I suppose that emotion comes with 



io8 Along the Road 

reflection, and that we pass through the most 
critical and tragic moments of life without any 
immediate consciousness that they are either 
critical or tragic at all. 



THE AWETO 

I WAS dining the other night with some friends; 
after dinner our host said that he had something 
very curious to show us. He went out of the 
room, and returned in a moment with a shallow, 
blue box, which he opened very carefully. In- 
side the box there was a dry and shrivelled cater- 
pillar about three inches long; out of its head 
grew a long horn, which must have been at least 
twice as long as the caterpillar. Some one said 
that the horn must be a very inconvenient ap- 
pendage. Our host laughed and said that it was 
a very inconvenient appendage indeed, but fortu- 
nately the caterpillar had been unaware of the 
inconvenience. He told us that it was a rare 
specimen. It came, he said, from New Zealand, 
and it is called the Aweto. It is a caterpillar 
which lives underground. Its habits are mys- 
terious. No one knows how it propagates its 
species, or what it turns into. It lives on eating 
seeds which it finds in the earth. There is one 
particular seed or spore which it cannot resist 
the temptation to eat, but it cannot swallow or 
digest it. The seed sticks in its throat, and im- 
109 



no Along the Road 

mediately iu that congenial position it begins to 
sprout. The plant breaks out behind the cater- 
pillar's head, and the roots grow into its body. 
The plant comes up like a slender rush; little is 
known of the plant either, but it does not appear 
to be able to germinate unless it is found and 
eaten by this particular caterpillar. I said that 
it all reminded me of the Bread-and-Butter-fly in 
Through the Looking Glass, which lived upon 
weak tea and bread and butter. Alice asked the 
Gnat what happened if it could not find any, and 
the Gnat replied that it died. Alice said that 
this must happen very often, to which the Gnat 
replied, "It always happens." The whole story, 
in fact, is so entirely whimsical that it seems to 
suggest that Nature is sometimes actuated by an 
irresponsible and rather cruel kind of humoui'. 
Such an extraordinary chain of circumstances 
can hardly come by chance, and yet so fortuitous 
and uncomfortable an arrangement seems hardly 
worth while inventing. Yet it goes on! The 
plant presumabl^^ sheds its seed into the ground 
in the hopes that some other Aweto may come 
along and do what is necessary. While if some 
more fortunate Aweto, in the course of its sub- 
terranean existence, does not come across one of 
these particular seeds, it may live a happy and 
blameless life, and turn into whatever it has a 
mind to become. 

Our host said that he believed that the story 
of the Aweto had once been used by a preacher 



The Aweto iii 

before Queen Victoria, as an illustration in his 
sermon, and that the Queen had been so much 
interested in the story that she had asked to have 
an Aweto sent for her inspection from some 
Natural History Museum. I find it hard to 
think what the application can have been. The 
poor Aw^eto has got to live, and it can hardly 
be expected to know, without being expressly 
informed, that the particular seed in question 
has such very unpleasant habits from the point 
of view of the Aweto. Neither can it be expected 
that the Aweto, on finding what it had done, 
would leave its burrow and betake itself to the 
nearest medical man for assistance, as the lion 
v\ith the thorn in its foot came to Androcles in the 
old story. On the other hand, it would be highly 
satisfactory if the Aweto knew of some other seed 
which would act, let us say, as an emetic, and 
more appropriate still if the Aweto were prudent 
enough to carry a small store of medicinal seeds 
about with it in case of emergencies I 

But I suppose that in a general way the story 
may be taken to apply to the indulgence of some 
fault, of a kind which seems harmless and natural 
enough; because the essence of the situation is 
that the Aweto does not appear to know, as most 
animals do, that the particular seed is not good 
for it to eat. 

It seems to me very much like the failing to 
which good people are prone — the tendency to 
enjoy finding fault with others. It seems at first 



112 Along the Road 

sight that this is rather a noble and conscientious 
thing to do; if you are quite sure that you are 
right, and have a strong belief in the virtuous 
and high quality of your own principles, you 
begin to practice what is called dealing faith- 
fully with other people, pulling them up, check- 
ing them, drenching them with good advice, 
improving the tone. Such people often say that 
of course they do not like doing it, but that they 
must bear witness to what they believe to be 
right. Of course, it is sometimes necessary in 
this world to protest; but the w^orst of the cen- 
sorious habit of mind is this, that it begins with 
principles and then extends to preferences. The 
self-righteous man begins to feel that the hours 
he keeps, the occupations he follows, the recrea- 
tions he enjoys, the food which agrees with him, 
are not matters of personal taste, but things that 
are virtuous and high-minded. If he likes jam 
with his tea, he will say that fruit is always 
wholesome, and that the taste for jam is a sign 
of a simple and unspoilt palate. If he does not 
like jam with his tea, he will say that it is waste- 
ful and luxurious, and that people ought not to 
tamper with their digestions. If he likes going 
to the theatre, he says that the drama is an in- 
spiring and ennobling thing; if he does not like 
the theatre, he will say that it is a waste of time 
and a pernicious and distracting influence, beset 
with moral dangers. As life goes on he becomes 
an intolerable person with whom no one can feel 



The Aweto 113 

at ease. One cannot say what one thinks be- 
fore him, for fear of incurring his disapproval. 
The head of the rush is beginning to show above 
ground, and the roots are spreading into the body! 
Then perhaps the censorious person marries, and 
improves his family out of all sympathy with 
what is fine and generous, by making goodness 
into a thoroughly disagreeable thing, which is 
never comfortable unless it is making some one 
else uncomfortable. 

The pity of it is that the censorious man is 
so often a fine character spoiled by egotism. One 
of the things which it is absolutely necessary to 
do in life is to distinguish between principles and 
preferences ; and even if one holds principles very 
strongly, it is generally better to act up to them, 
and to trust to the effect of example, than to 
bump other people, as Dickens said, into paths 
of peace. 

It is often said by people of this type that 
praise is unwholesome, and that in bringing up 
a child one must never commend it for any un- 
selfishness or self-restraint or perseverance, be- 
cause people ought not to get to depend upon 
praise. But, on the other hand, it may be said 
that a child who is always being scolded and 
never has the sense of its parents' or teachers' 
approval gets into a stupefied and disheartened 
condition and gives up the game in despair, be- 
cause whatever it does it is sure to be put in 
the wrong. I found, in my twenty years' experi- 

8 



114 Along the Road 

ence as a schoolmaster, that well-deserved praise 
was the most potent factor of improvement in 
the world; to neglect it is to throw awa}' de- 
liberately one of the strongest and most beautiful 
of natural and moral forces. . . . 

Well, we have drifted far enough away from 
the poor Aweto and its ruthless invader. It is 
a pity to run one's metaphor too hard; and it 
is a mistake, I think, to draw analogies too freely 
between natural processes and moral processes. 
The essence of the natural process is its inevi- 
tability and its inflexibility. No species of edu- 
cation could be devised for the Aweto which could 
lead it to exercise a wiser selection of food ; while 
the essence of the moral process is that there is 
a faculty of choice, limited no doubt by circum- 
stance and heredity, but still undoubtedly there. 
But the poor Aweto is a parable, for all that, of 
many sad things which happen about us day by 
day; while if we choose to invert the image, and 
to consider the question from the point of view 
of the rush, we may consider the Aweto to be 
the type of a fine kind of unselfishness which 
gives itself up without calculation or reluctance, 
and lays down its life that some root of beauty 
may send a growing head of greenness and 
freshness into sunshine and air. 



THE OLD FAMILY NURSE 

Reth^ as we called her, and as her name is written 
in many hearts, was born in 1818. She had a 
little simple teaching at a dame's school; the 
small children were taught to spell and read; 
the elder girls sewed and read alond. She was 
very happy at school, she used to say ; but where 
was Beth not happy? It was a slender outfit, 
l)ut it was enough for all she had to do. 

When she was sixteen, in 1834, she went to 
l)e nursemaid in the family of my grandfather, 
the Rev. William Sidgwick, Headmaster of Skip- 
ton Grammar School. He was a delicate man 
and died young; my grandmother was left a 
widow with six little children, of whom two died 
in infancy, and eventually settled at Rugby. 
Beth brought them all up — William Sidgwick, 
formerly tutor of ^lerton; Henry Sidgwick, the 
Cambridge Professor; Arthur Sidgwick, the 
Rugby master, afterwards tutor of Corpus Col- 
lege, Oxford; and my mother. My father went 
to Rugby as a master in 1852, and lived with the 
Sidgwicks, who were his cousins; he married in 
1859, and went to Wellington College as Head- 

115 



ii6 Along the Road 

master; Beth came on there as nurse in 1860, 
and brought up all of us, going on with us to 
Lincoln and Truro, and coming on to Lambeth 
as housekeeper. Since my father's death she had 
lived on with my mother, full of activity and 
energy till she had passed her ninetieth year. In 
the last eighteen months she was confined to bed 
and sofa. Even so her illness was not unhappy; 
she could enjoy reading and talk, and welcome 
with smiles her many visitors. On May 5, 1911, 
she just breathed away her life, dying like a 
tired child. 

Thus she had been nearly seventy-seven years 
in one family, and wholly identified with its in- 
terests and afiPections. Her room was a little 
gallery of pictures and photographs, the many 
scenes of her long life, and the faces of those 
Avhom she had tended and loved. There seems 
hardly any affection that is closer than that, with 
no tie of blood behind it, but yet having shared 
every experience and association, every sorrow 
and joy with us; everything told to her, every- 
thing confided to her, her whole heart and memory 
a mine rich in the secrets of love and life. 

She was a slight, spare Yorkshire woman, with 
the perfect health that comes of a strong consti- 
tution and a mind always occupied with the 
thought of other people. She had severe illnesses 
in her later years, but rallied from them. Her 
face, strong and expressive, and with a touch of 
austerity, even severity as I first knew it, had 



The Old Family Nurse 117 

softened into one of the sweetest and most 
radiant of expressions I ever saw, full of tran- 
quil goodwill; and in her later years, free from 
nursery responsibilities, she had developed a 
gaiety and a childlike zest in the little incidents 
of life that was even surprising. She loved to 
be made fun of, and to have her old strictness 
recognised, and she was full of shrewd repartees 
and homely epigrams. She had a very shrewd 
and even stern judgment of character, but for 
those whom she loved she had a perfectly un- 
critical and unquestioning affection. She kept 
her opinions of people to herself, unless there 
was need to speak; and even so she was always 
on the side of example rather than precept. Her 
displeasure, in nursery days, was very slow in 
coming, and silent and sorrowful when it came; 
but if Beth had reason to feel ashamed at some- 
thing one had done or said, there was nothing 
that one Avould not attempt to regain her good 
opinion. She never scolded, never interfered; she 
hardly ever even played with us; sometimes she 
could be persuaded to tell a little story, but it 
was always of real life. She w^as always at work 
for us, always ready to provide anything for us, 
or to clear anything away, stopping the nursery 
racket, if it became unbearable, by a word, and 
never severe except to unkindness or quarrelsome- 
ness; she never lectured or indulged in moral 
reflections ; she made us many presents, and loved 
giving pleasure more than anything else in the 



ii8 Along the Road 

world ; she made no parade of lier qualities, aud, 
iudeed, never compared herself with any one. It 
was, I think, inconceivable to her that any one 
should be selfish or dishonest or unkind. She 
enjoyed her work, and she never seemed tired or 
fretted ; neither was she ever unemployed. Her 
work done, in the later years, she would trot 
about the house, look after the clothes of any of 
her children who happened to be at home; and 
if something was lacking, it would be found that 
Beth had as often as not supplied it out of her 
own pocket. So it went on day after day, the 
same perfectly faithful, unobtrusive service, never 
claiming the least gratitude or honour — just glad 
to be with those she loved, and happy to spend 
herself, her time and thought, in tending and 
pleasing them. 

She had a great natural dignity of manner and 
speech ; she was just as much at home in the big 
households of Lambeth and Addington as she had 
been in the old, simple days, and she was re- 
garded by every one with natural affection and 
respect. She was brought into contact with 
many distinguished people, and behaved to them 
all with a perfectly unaffected directness and 
courtesy. She received Queen Victoria in the 
Wellington College nursery, and answered her 
kind questions with simple straightforwardness, 
giving her the title of '' M}^ Majesty"; and in 
later years she would do the honours of her little 
room to a bishop or a dean with the same perfect 



The Old Family Nurse 119 

sweetness and naturalness, taking people as they 
were, and not as they were called. She never 
claimed the time or the attention of any one. 
If one was at home, she would come in just for 
a word and a look to satisfy herself that the 
nursling had returned to the nest. She said 
good-bye with tears, and my last vision of home 
for many years, on departure to work, has been 
the sight of Beth waving her handkerchief at the 
little casement of her room, to return to her work 
with a thought of love and sorrowful farewell. 
When, after my father's death, we were all for 
a time dispersed, she was staying with her York- 
shire relations, suffering much from home-sick- 
ness and the absence of dear faces, and hearing 
that my youngest brother was to pass through 
town on his way to his curacy, she came up alone 
to a London terminus, just to get a sight of him, 
had a few half-tearful, half -joyful words with him, 
and gallantly returned. 

The wonder of it all! Fresh as I am from a 
sense of her loss, and with the thought of all 
the old days of tendance and affection breaking 
on the mind in waves of memory, I do not want 
to exaggerate or to say more than I believe; but 
it does seem to me one of the most perfect lives 
that could be lived, in its humility, its sweetness, 
its devotion, its dutifulness, and in its abounding 
love. The materials so simple, the outfit so 
slight, the worth of it so pure and true. There 
is something amazing about the entire absence 



I20 Along the Road 

of personal claim, the generosity, the fulness of 
it all. She was one of the few people I have 
ever known who really found it more blessed to 
give than to receive, who only asked of life that 
she might work, and love, and be loved. 

It was all so fine in its quality ; her clear judg- 
ment, her love of beautiful things, her splendid 
sense and calmness, her perfect helpfulness in 
sorrow or trouble, the utter absence of any 
morbidity or self-pity, of any reference to her 
own rights or needs. She did not draw a line 
round her work, or claim any leisure or ease ; she 
simply never thought about herself at all; if 
there was work to be done, she enjoyed doing 
it; if there was time disengaged, there was some 
one whom she could please; and her simplicity 
about it all was not the effort of a sincere nature 
striving against complacency; it was simply the 
instinctive gratitude for life, its homely duties 
and its dear cares. It was not as if she had not 
tastes and preferences; she loved travelling, and 
was transported by scenery. She came with us 
more than once to Switzerland, and on first catch- 
ing sight of snow-mountains, " Is it seen with 
the eye?" she said. She loved, too, the beauty 
of words, enjoyed poetry and good books; and 
the only difficulty in reading to her in later life 
was that she could not bear to hear of anything 
unkind or unhappy. 

I do not know what her religious faith was; 
she could not have explained it; but she knew 



The Old Family Nurse 121 

the meaninp^ of the large words of life — pardon, 
love, and peace — and she lived so entirely in the 
spirit of Christ that she had little need to think 
about points of doctrine. The last things she 
cared to hear were simple old hymns, which she 
repeated softly to herself with the reader, till 
the day when my mother said to her, " You are 
sleepy, Beth; you would like to go to sleep?" 
"Yes, to sleep, and to forget everything!" with 
a tired smile. 

Well, it is all over and done, and the worn-out 
body sleeps in a little Sussex churchyard. I shall 
never see her again, slipping lightly down to greet 
nie, as the wheels grated on the gravel, or see her 
waving farewell through her tears. But neither 
can I think of her as at rest. Even when the 
body that had toiled so faithfully gave way at last, 
tlie mind and the spirit, the desire to serve and 
love, were just as strong and fresh as ever. The 
dear hands, once so worn with work, grew soft 
and white in those last months, and she would 
look wonderingly at them, as if surprised at their 
lack of strength and use; but one feels of a spirit 
like hers that it must pass refreshed and renewed 
to some further heavenly service. If there are 
souls to serve and love, Beth will somehow find 
them out to tend and comfort them! 

And how such a life puts to shame one's de- 
signs and hopes and ambitions and claims! It 
teaches one how entirely happy life could be, 
lived on the simplest lines, if only one cared for 



122 Along the Road 

others rather than for oneself, and took a natural 
joy in work, instead of thinking of it as some- 
thing troublesome and tedious, to be discharged 
and put aside; and it shows one, too, how the 
personal relation, the brimming-over tenderness, 
the absorption in others, is what matters most 
of all, and survives when all other hopes and 
desires decay. It is surely the one thing that 
does matter. If all enjoyed work and lived for 
love, like Beth, the world would be a simple and 
a happy place. She never resisted sorrow, nor 
repined at any loss or trouble; she did not dwell 
on her right to be happy. If others were suffer- 
ing, she simply poured her healing love and care 
into the gap; and all this with no sense of recti- 
tude, no rigid adherence to principle; her prin- 
ciples were, with her, what sustained life and 
conduct, not things to be used to correct and 
terrify others with — and the motive of all was 
love. One must believe that temperament has yet 
its varied work; but by seeing and feeling the 
beauty of such a life, in one's sorrow for the 
loss of it and one's gratitude for the gift of it, 
one may surely get a little closer to the truth. 

She was the first human being of whose love 
I was directly conscious, and her tender care has 
enveloped my whole life, as boy and man; the 
beloved nurse, and the dearest friend I have ever 
known or shall know. I mean to be better, purer, 
and simpler for her life and example, and with 
a sure and certain hope of reunion. Her spirit 



The Old Family Nurse 123 

will find ours out, if she has to journey to meet 
us; aud I feel of her something of what John 
Wesley said of his friend Whitefield, when he 
preached what seemed to be erroneous doctrine, 
and some poor, carping disciple said to Wesley, 
hoping for a grim answer : " Do you think, sir, 
that when we get to heaven we shall see Mr. 
Whitefield ? " "I doubt, sir," said the old evan- 
gelist, " for he will be so near the throne, and 
we so far off, that we shall scarce get sight of 
him." 



THE ANGLICAN CLERGY 

It is always, I think, amusing to be criticised as 
one of a class. When I read the other day, in 
a speech about the House of Lords — I forget 
whose, but I rather think it was one of Mr. 
Winston Churchill's conciliatory orations — that 
the only people who took an interest in the con- 
stitutional aspect of the question were uni- 
versity dons and the sort of people who read 
the Spectator, I was not displeased, because 
I knew that, though I was a don, I was singularly 
free from all the prejudices and foibles of the 
class. So I am not afraid of writing about the 
clergyman from the point of view of the layman, 
because I am sure that no one will feel person- 
ally aggrieved. It is not either as though I had 
anything at all satirical or wounding to say. I 
was brought up among the clergy, and I lived 
for a considerable part of my life in close touch 
with ecclesiastical circles. Some of my best and 
dearest friends are clergymen; and I think I may 
fairly claim to have known a great number of 
clergy and a great variety of clergy. As a school- 
master and as a don I lived mainly among lay- 
124 



The Anglican Clergy 125 

men ; but a man is not easily detached from his 
class, and to this day my heart, like Words- 
worth's, rather leaps up when I behold a clergy- 
man. I like what I may call clerical shop ; I enjoy 
talk about clerical costume, church music and 
furniture, ecclesiastical politics and promotions. 1 
am a connoisseur of clerical humour, which is 
often very good of its kind — a mild, dry beverage, 
with a delicate ethical flavour, and with a lam- 
bent irony that plays innocuously about arch- 
deacons and rural deans. But it requires, as Mr. 
Shorthouse once wrote about the High Anglican 
position, an initiation to comprehend; and one 
must be bred up in it to realise its peculiar and 
pleasant characteristics. 

I am often surprised at the view which what 
I may call men of the world are apt to take 
about our clergy. They look upon them as rather 
feminine, narrow-minded, officious men, with poky 
interests and fussy tendencies. Some go further, 
and allow themselves to think and speak of the 
clergy as men with whom insincerity has become 
a second nature, as people who are in the un- 
happy position of having to preach and accept 
doctrines and modes of thought in which they 
do not really believe. The other day I had occa- 
sion to remonstrate with an academical friend 
who talked in this vein. I was compelled at last 
to say that the only possible explanation of his 
talk was that he simply did not know any of 
the clergy well enough to form an opinion. The 



126 Along the Road 

outside opinion of a class is almost always a 
belated one, and is generally true of the worst 
specimens of the class as it was about forty years 
before; and it is true to say that a very great 
change has passed over the three professional 
classes with which I am best acquainted — clergy, 
schoolmasters, and dons. The fact is that they 
have all three become very much less professional 
than they were. The clergy have no desire to 
take a superior line or to improve the occasion, 
the don does not in the least desire to deride the 
ignorance of others, nor does the schoolmaster 
thirst to impart elementary information. The 
clergy have become a part of the national life 
in the last thirty or forty years to a marked 
extent. In novels, in comic papers, on the stage, 
a certain amount of mild fun is poked at them, 
but the frequency of their appearance is a very 
clear proof that they are a real social factor. 
The fact is that the sense of responsibility has 
enormously increased among the clergy, and with 
it their influence and status. I believe that they 
wield great and increasing power, and do so with 
wonderful modesty and moderation. There are 
constant complaints about the dearth of clergy. 
That is the inevitable result of a very real and 
deep improvement in the standard of character 
and the sense of vocation. I was constantly sur- 
prised when I was a master at Eton by the way 
in which parents used to express a hope and a 
desire that their sons might take orders; but a 



The Anglican Clergy 127 

boy was never briskly consigned, so to speak, to 
the clerical profession; it was alwaj^s understood 
that no sort of pressure was to be applied. 

Then, too, there is the organisation of clerical 
training, which in the last forty years has turned 
what was often a very amateurish business into 
a real and sensible specialism. There is no sort 
of doubt that the clergy are infinitely better 
equipped for their work than they were. 

Xow the result of all this is that when one 
encounters, say as a stranger in a strange place, 
a clergyman, what does one expect to find? I 
will say frankly what I expect to find, and gen- 
erally do find. I find first a man of real courtesy, 
kindness, and consideration, surely the best note 
of the pastor. I want to emphasise this point 
because it is true and important. I am aston- 
ished at the unfailing courtesy of the clergy 
whenever and in whatever capacity one meets 
them. They have not a monopoly of this, of 
course; but while the ordinary English layman 
is a pleasant, bluff, sensible person, he often gives 
you the feeling of a certain aloofness, and shows 
that he is not particularly interested in your 
affairs. But the kindness of the clergy is a real 
and eager kindness, a desire to be personally 
pleasant and useful and companionable; it is not 
an obtrusive courtesy or a desire for mutual 
recognition; it is the benevolence of a man who 
thinks it is his business to help and serve, and 
who does it with all his heart. The exceptions 



128 Along the Road 

to this are so rare as to be negligible; and I 
think that it is perhaps the most distinguishing 
characteristic of the clergy. No matter how petty 
or tiresome one's requisitions may be, one finds 
a clergyman always ready and anxious to do 
whatever he can. And I think they add to this 
another high quality, and that is the virtue of 
common sense. I am going to make one excep- 
tion to this later on, but as a rule I am struck 
with the shrewd and tolerant judgment they dis- 
play of men and things, and the real knowledge 
that many of them have of human nature. This 
is a thing which can only come by experience, 
and it is in itself a strong testimony to their quiet 
and laborious work among human beings. And 
further, I am sure that they are distinguished, 
as a rule, by what I can only call conspicuous 
good breeding. They get this from having to mix 
on intimate terms with all sorts of people, high 
and low; and our clergy are accordingly both 
well-mannered, in the best sense, and unaffected. 
They do not vary their manner with reference 
to social position ; they are respectful, genial, and 
simple with all alike. Of course, there are in- 
dividuals who may fail in these qualities. But 
I am sure that any one who has seen a large 
variety of parsons will agree with me that what 
I have said is in no way excessive. 

Now, having said thus much in grateful and 
sincere recognition of the merits of our clergy, 
may I add a few small criticisms? I think that 



The Anglican Clergy 129 

the clergy do not do themselves full justice in 
two points. Tlie first point is a complicated and 
difficult one; it is that they display a certain 
tinndity of mind in the discussion of religious 
questions. There is no doubt that religious 
opinion among the laity, at all events, is advanc- 
ing very rapidly upon more or less liberal lines. 
Tliere is an amusing story which may illustrate 
my point. It is said that when a certain Bible 
dictionary was being compiled, the editor asked 
a prominent ecclesiastic for an article on the 
Deluge. It was rather late in arriving, and when 
it came the editor found that it was too advanced 
and heterodox for his purpose. So to gain time 
he put under the word "Deluge" the reference 
'^ see Flood,-' and hastily requisitioned another 
article from another contributor. But when that 
arrived, it seemed also too liberal in its tend- 
encies ; so he put " Flood, see Xoah," and took 
time to consider. But when he reached "Noah" he 
found that public opinion had changed, and that 
tlie original article on the Deluge was now ortho- 
dox enough, and inserted it accordingly. 

Tlie clergy are so anxious — and, indeed, it is 
their business — to conciliate all shades of opin- 
ion, and so desirous not to offend the most 
scrupulous of consciences, that they give the im- 
pression, I often think, of being more retrograde 
than they are. I do not know how this difficulty 
is to be met; I suppose it will cure itself. But 
the result is that, instead of the clergy taking 



130 Along the Road 

the lead in religious thought, aud giving the kiud 
of guidauce that thiuking people require, they 
frighten people into silence by an appearance of 
antiquated reserve on vexed questions. I am not 
speaking about the essential and fundamental 
doctrines of Christianity, but upon the large 
fringe of accessory points which surrounds the 
central truths ; and thus a thoughtful layman, in- 
stead of feeling that a clergyman is the right per- 
son with whom he can discuss religious problems, 
thinks of him as a person who is easily shocked, 
as a man who cannot face the development of 
Christian thought. 

And then, too, I am sure that the clergy lose 
ground by being too much in earnest about what 
a rude layman would call millinery. The de- 
velopment of Church ceremonial and tradition is 
in its way a beautiful and attractive thing, but 
if it is too prominent in a clergyman's mind, it 
develops a sort of impatience in the lay mind. 
It is rather easy for a clergyman to deceive him- 
self in the matter ; for there are in every congre- 
gation a certain number of people whose interest 
in such things is sincere and genuine; but they 
are not always the most robust of the flock; and 
if a clergyman allows himself to pay undue at- 
tention to these matters, he is in danger of for- 
feiting masculine allegiance. Most people like 
the service of the sanctuary to be solemn and 
dignified ; but the ordinary Englishman does not 
care for what is symbolical — my father used to 



The Anglican Clergy 131 

saj that even the Baptismal Service was too 
dramatic for a certain type of British mind; and 
if a clergyman allows his interest in such mat- 
ters to become too pronounced, he will have to 
part company with what is perhaps the most 
vigorous section of his flock. And in this con- 
nection may I mention a small point which T 
think is sincerely to be deplored, and that is the 
unhappy intonation, which is supposed to be de- 
votional, but which is often both slovenly and 
pietistic, which is too common in our churches, 
especially in the reading of Scripture. No one 
desires reading to be melodramatic; but I declare 
that I heard the other day one of the most fla- 
grant and brutal passages of the Old Testament, 
the death of Jezebel, which is a piece of desperate 
and hideous tragedy, read in church as though it 
were the amiable musings of some contemplative 
hermit. This does give a layman a sense of un- 
reality and absurdity combined; and instruction 
in restrained dramatic elocution should be a part 
of every theological course. 

I do not say these things in at all a captious 
or ungracious spirit. I think that they are points 
deserving of serious consideration. I will only 
repeat what I believe to be the simple truth, that 
we have in the Anglican Church a body of men 
who in social standing, devotion, and true pas- 
toral virtue are incomparably higher and finer 
than the clergy of any other communion. They 
have won, under severe criticism and even disdain 



132 Along the Road 

— the shadow of the old dreary and sleepy Eras- 
tian times — the respect and affection and trust 
of their countrymen. For a paltry wage, in a 
career which gives but small opportunity to 
worldly ambition, they live uprightly and purely 
and beneficently; and their children — I say this 
from personal experience of them at school and 
college — are some of the wholesomest and sim- 
plest specimens of English growth. I look with 
dread upon any legislation which would in any 
way imperil the energy and efficiency of a class 
whose services and labours are of incalculable 
benefit to the nation. 



COMPULSORY GREEK 

There has been another controversy in the Times 
on the subject of Compulsory Greek. The de- 
fence has been mainly conducted by Professor 
Murray, who has perhaps done as much to inter- 
pret the Greek spirit as any other living Briton. 
Professor Turner, the great astronomer, leads the 
attack, and Sir Edwin Ray Lankester, the emi- 
nent scientist, has dealt some shrewd blows. The 
gist of the controversy is this : that Oxford and 
Cambridge, alone of our universities, make it 
practically impossible for any one to enter with- 
out a modicum of Greek. It is not seriously 
contended that this amount of Greek does the 
possessor of it any particular good; it certainly 
is not enough to enable him to have any very 
intimate perception of Greek literature and Greek 
thought. One hears of the most grotesque de- 
vices being resorted to in order to creep through 
the fence. The other day a young friend of mine, 
who is a promising engineer, wishing to enter 
at Cambridge, and knowing no Greek, learned 
by heart the English translation of a Greek play, 
trusting to knowing just enough of the language 

133 



134 Along the Road 

to be able in the examinatiou to write down the 
correct passage. No one can pretend that such 
a process is anything but an irritating interrup- 
tion to his real work. But the grounds on which 
this regulation is defended are the following. It 
is alleged that if Greek is not kept compulsory 
at some universities, the study of it will perish, 
because there will not be enough bo3's learning 
it at smaller schools to have a Greek master; 
and it is further alleged that universities whicli 
desire that their studies should be, in a general 
way, of a literary type, should do all thej^ can 
to preserve the study of what is undoubtedly the 
finest flower of culture in the world; and the 
defenders of Greek go on to urge that if students 
of science are allowed to specialise entirely in 
science, their mind loses its intellectual balance, 
and becomes narrow and one-sided. 

I am myself wholly of opinion that it would 
be a great misfortune if the study of Greek were 
abandoned; and I think it is perfectly true that 
specialism in science is a dangerous thing; it is 
important, on many grounds, that men of science 
should possess some literary culture; but I am 
equally sure that the retention of compulsory 
Greek under present conditions is a hindrance 
rather than a help to the advanced study of the 
language ; while for scientific students compulsory 
Greek not only does not give literary culture, 
but actually consumes the time which might be 
given to it, because Greek, learnt as it is, does 



Compulsory Greek 135 

■not present itself to the average boyish mind as 
literature at all. 

Then there comes the case of the ordinary pass- 
man. Now here, I think, it is a great misfortune 
that the defence of Greek is as a rule conducted 
by literary giants, so to speak; men to whom 
Greek never presented any intellectual difficulty, 
and to whom the beauty of Greek literature ap- 
pealed from the very first. These defenders of 
Greek are perfectly sincere; they cannot under- 
stand how anything which seems to them so per- 
fectly and entirely majestic and beautiful as 
Greek literature should not have a beneficial 
effect upon the minds of those who have to 
learn it. 

Personally, I approach the subject from a dif- 
ferent point of view. As an old schoolmaster I 
taught, first and last, at Eton, about two thou- 
snnd boys, of all ages and attainments. And I 
unhesitatingly declare that the number of boys 
to whom Greek appealed as literature was a very 
small percentage indeed. I am quite sure that 
the hours devoted to classics — ^by far the larger 
share of the hours of work — were not only w^asted 
hours, which might have been given to stimu- 
lating and intelligible work, but worse than 
wasted, because they taught boys to dislike and 
to despise intellectual pursuits altogether. The 
average boy at the end of an elaborate classical 
education is often in the miserable position of 
knowing no classics, and not having had the time 



136 Along the Road 

to learn anythiug else. Nowadays, when com- 
petition is so severe, an education which does 
not put a boy in a position to earn his living is 
not only a wasted education — it is a fraud! And 
too many boys find themselves stranded on this 
account. A boy who knows French and Ger- 
man, can calculate correctly, can express himself 
in English, and can write a good hand, is in 
a position to earn his living; there is plenty of 
time to teach him these things, and to give him, 
as well, some elementary science, some history 
and geography, and some sound religious teach- 
ing. But there is not time for all these things 
and for the classics as well. Moreover, a boy 
educated on modern lines would be capable of 
understanding what is going on in the world; 
and it is ridiculous to say that his intellectual 
interests could not be stimulated by the above 
programme. What does happen is that his in- 
tellectual interests are not stimulated by classics, 
and he is often rendered inefficient as well. 

Moreover, such a boy ought not to be excluded 
from Oxford or Cambridge on the grounds of an 
ignorance of classics. There are many reasons 
— social reasons, reasons of tradition and associa- 
tion — why parents who can afiPord it should send 
boys to Oxford and Cambridge. The two Univer- 
sities have a special tone of their own, and a 
very fine tone. What I feel that the Universities 
ought to do is to offer as wide a choice as pos- 
sible of alternative subjects, encourage all their 



Compulsory Greek 137 

men to take up a congenial sn1)ject, and raise the 
standard of performance in these subjects. At 
present it is confessed that the intellectual stand- 
ard demanded of the passmen is deplorably low; 
and why all this waste of power, this manufacture 
of inefficiency should be permitted, just because 
tlie abolition of compulsory Greek might possibly 
endanger the interests of one special subject, I 
cannot conceive. It seems to be a monopoly and 
a tyranny which ought to be resolutely resisted. 

The other day an official high in the Civil 
Service said to me that he had a number of 
appointments to make. " I wanted," he said, " to 
secure public school and university men if I 
could, because the type is such a good one in 
every way, and I made special efforts to secure 
them. I interviewed a large number of candi- 
dates; the men of the kind I wanted were in 
general ways the best; but they simply were use- 
less for my purpose. They could not, many of 
ihem, write a respectable hand; they could not 
express themselves in English, they could not 
calculate accurately, they knew no French and 
German, and they did not even know their 
classics." That seems to me a very deplorable 
indictment, but it is true. And the pity of it 
is that the machinery for producing good results 
is all there, but it is working on the wrong lines. 

The defenders of compulsory Greek seem un- 
aware how much conditions have altered in the 
last fifty years. The world has passed through 



138 Along the Road 

a period of immense expansion. An attempt has 
been made to meet this at schools by introducing 
new studies, but the effect of them has been 
nullified by trying to keep the classics as well. 
Tt has become a farce, and a dangei'ous farce; 
and it ought not to be allowed to continue. 

T am glad to see that the pressure of public 
opinion is producing an effect. We have lately 
at Cambridge taken a step which reduces our 
position to an absurdity. We demand Greek for 
entrance to the University, but we do not require 
that a man shall do any more Greek when he has 
once entered. That is to say, we acquiesce in a 
boy's time being wasted at school in learning a 
subject which we do not insist on his continuing 
at the University. What then becomes of our 
ideal of culture, and of the necessity of putting 
men under the influence of Greek thought? Of 
course it is ver}^ difficult to break down a system 
which has been long in use; there is a conserva- 
tive tendency in academical circles, and there are 
vested interests as well. But it is not good citi- 
zenship to let this block the way to a great and 
desirable reform. 

I have often been amused in the course of the 
controversy to recall the three reasons, attributed 
I think to Dean Gaisford of Christ Church, for 
the study of Greek. The Dean is supposed to 
have said that the first reason was that a know- 
ledge of Greek gave a man a proper degree of 
contempt for men of lesser acquirements. That 



Compulsory Greek 139 

does not seem to me to be a spirit which it is 
(lesiiable to cultivate, and in any case the pass- 
man's store of Greek is hardly an adequate basis 
for any form of intellectual i)ride. The second 
reason was that it enabled a man to study the 
words of our Saviour in the original tongue. T 
suppose that it is now generally admitted that 
our Lord probably spoke iVramaic, but in any 
case a man who was not impressed by the teach- 
ing of the Gospel in the English version could 
hnrdly be supposed to derive much additional 
benefit from studying the Greek Testament; 
though, of course, in any such reform as I have 
indicated, the interests of the theological faculty 
would be carefully safeguarded. 

The third reason, and the most conclusive, was 
that it led to situations of emolument ; so it does, 
no doubt, for the few who have the privilege of 
continuing to teach Greek. But for the ordinary 
man I would affirm that so far from compulsory 
Greek leading him to situations of emolument, it 
is the principal factor in our English education 
which leaves him at the threshold of life without 
a prospect of any situation at all. 



GAMBLING 

I LISTENED the other day to an earnest and elo- 
qnent sermon against gambling and betting, 
wliich left an unsatisfactory impression on my 
mind. No one, of course, has any doubt that 
gambling is responsible for a great deal of crime 
and misery, and that it is in a large number of 
cases an entirely reprehensible and pernicious 
practice. But the difficulty about it is that it 
seems impossible to lay down absolutely cogent 
and conclusive moral reasons against It. The 
same is not the case with things like theft or 
cruelty, which can be condemned root and branch. 
No amount of sophistical argument could justify 
the theft of a threepenny-bit, or deliberate cruelty 
to the smallest and humblest of insects. But it 
would take a very stringent moralist to condemn 
a bet of sixpence between two millionaires as to 
the correctness of a disputed date, and few people 
would be found to condemn on moral grounds 
the playing of a rubber of whist by well-to-do 
people for penny points. It seems to be a ques- 
ti9n of degree and expediency, and possibly of 
example. The preacher said that one of the rea- 

140 



Gambling 141 

sons against betting was that it was not honest 
to tal^e money that one had not earned. But 
this plea cannot be for an instant sustained, be- 
cause it would do away with the possibility of 
accepting all gifts or legacies, or the increment 
of a fortunate investment; and are there any 
moralists so strict as to think themselves bound, 
if a perfectly bona fide investment turns out 
well, to pay the proceeds to the State, or to the 
company, or to devote it all to charitable uses? 
Moreover, what becomes of such a thing as a 
life-insurance? There is nothing which is con- 
sidered to be more virtuous or prudent or well- 
regulated than for a young man to insure his 
life. Yet the transaction is nothing more nor less 
than a bet. If you insure your life, you are bet- 
ting on your death, while the insurance company 
is betting on your life. If you die young, your 
wife and children have the benefit of a sum of 
money which has certainly not been earned, and 
Avhich is paid by your fellow-insured w^ho do not 
die. 

If a man who can afford it bets, and does not 
bet beyond his means, on the ground that it 
amuses him, it is very difficult to say where the 
moral guilt comes in. No one could say that all 
money spent on amusement is misapplied. No 
one would say that it was morally wrong to keep 
a yacht, or to take a shooting, if you have the 
money to pay for it, and if you think the amuse- 
ment worth the outlay. It is all, in a sense, a 



142 Along the Road 

waste of money, but it is the purest socialism, 
aud socialism of an advanced type, to say that no 
one has a right to spend more than he requires for 
the bare necessaries of life. 

The mere fact that money should change hands 
is not in itself reprehensible, if both parties to 
the arrangement concur in the process. Of 
course, it is wrong if you lose money that you 
cannot pay, or money which ought to be devoted 
to reasonable thrift, or to the education of child- 
ren ; but this would apply to innumerable things, 
not in themselves wrong, but which become wrong 
simply by the force of circumstances. I knew a 
worthy little tradesman once who had a passion* 
for buying books. The desire in itself was in- 
nocent enough, but he ruined himself and reduced 
his family to beggary by indulging his hobby; 
and it is difficult to see that he was less culp- 
able than if he had brought about the same 
result by betting. 

Then the preacher said that all gambling 
vitiated and weakened the moral fibre; but this 
again is not the case. It is perfectly true of 
people who succumb to the passion for gambling ; 
but I have known many worthy men who have 
played whist for small points two or three times 
a week for the greater part of their lives, who have 
certainly exhibited no traces whatever of moral 
deterioration. I read, indeed, in a book the other 
day an eloquent plea put in the mouth of a bet- 
ting agent to the effect that one ought not to 



Gambling 143 

deuy to poor people the odIj method they have 
of indulging the pleasures of imagination and 
hope! This, I think, is an entirely sophistical 
plea — there are few vices which one could not 
defend upon similar grounds; and it may be urged 
as a purely practical consideration, that healthy 
and well-balanced natures do not need that form 
of amusement, and that if a nature is not healthy 
and well-balanced, it is a dangerous pastime at 
best. 

There is one perfectly reasonable argument 
which may be urged against the whole practice, 
and this is the enormous waste involved. If the 
end of all betting and gambling were that certain 
foolish persons had a little more money than they 
had earned, and certain other foolish persons a 
little less, it would not be so wasteful. But this 
is not the case. Out of the money that changes 
hands, a large class of persons — betting and gam- 
bling agents of all descriptions — are supported. 
Granted that the whole system is defensible on 
moral grounds, no doubt many of these people 
earn their money honestly and laboriously; but 
the class is an unnecessary one, to say the least. 
They produce nothing, they are supported at the 
expense of the community, and they live on money 
w^hich many of the losers cannot spare. 

And then there comes in the fact, which is the 
one strong and absolute argument against the 
whole thing: that betting and gambling are, as I 
have said, undoubtedly responsible for an im- 



144 Along the Road 

meiise amouut of wretcliediiess aud privation, and 
even of crime. The i)assion for gambling is a 
vice which lays an irresistible grip upon people, 
and too often npon people who begin by thinking 
that it is in their power to stop whenever they 
choose. That, I think, is the consideration which 
onght to be invariably urged in the matter: that 
no one can possibly tell, until he has tried, 
whether he may not be liable to the contagion ; 
and that if he once contracts it, it is well-nigh 
impossible to cure; and, therefore, it is a practice 
which all sensible and conscientious people who 
have the welfare of society at heart should set 
their faces against, and give no encouragement 
to, lest they cause their brethren to offend. It 
is not a practice against which, as I have said., 
obvious and conclusive moral reasons can be 
urged, and it damages the cause of those who 
disapprove of gambling to fulminate against it 
as though it were an utterly reprehensible and 
abominable thing. Such a course savours of 
fanaticism, and sets moderate people against a 
good cause. But the evil is so insidious, so far- 
reaching, so horribly destructive in its develop- 
ments, that it must be met sensibly and tranquilly. 
It may be the only cure for excess that all 
moderate people should abstain; and in any case 
gambling is not a practice that can be included 
among normal, natural, and innocent pleasures. 
The State, by stopping lotteries and making bet- 
ting with all who are under age a criminal offence. 



Gambling 145 

has shown a sense of responsibility in the matter. 
Further than this it is doubtful whether, in these 
democratic days, it would be possible to go, for 
there is little doubt that one of the attractions 
of public athletic contests is the gambling that 
accompanies them; and whether a nation which 
indulges so largely as Englishmen do indulge in 
betting would consent to tie their hands in the 
matter is questionable. A serious politician with 
whom I was discussing the subject the other day 
said that, to his mind, one of the strong reasons 
for granting female suffrage was that he believed 
that far more stringent laws on the subject of 
gambling would result, because he said that 
women did not indulge in gambling, and were 
the part of the community that suffered most in 
consequence of it. I do not know that I should 
go as far as this; and it would, of course, be a 
far better solution if the evil could be cured by 
voluntary abstention rather than by legislation. 

The preacher maintained that the nation at the 
present time showed grave signs of decadence and 
moral deterioration. That, I believe, to be wholly 
untrue. I think there is every reason to believe 
that, as a nation, we are more healthy, more 
vigorous, more sensible by far than we were a 
century ago. T do not believe that the increase 
of gambling is a sign of decadence, but a proof 
that the working-classes have more money and 
leisure than they used to have. One wishes, of 
course, that it did not manifest itself in that 



146; Along the Road 



particular way; but I am glad, on general 
grounds, that the democracy should realise that 
it has the right and the time to be amused. In 
any case, gambling cannot be suppressed by lec- 
turing or scolding, or the expression of pious 
horror. That is only exorcising the evil spirit, 
and leaving its dwelling-place empty and gar- 
nished. The only way is to encourage a taste 
for better and more innocent pleasures, and thus 
the evil would insensibly disappear. 



HYMNS 

I HAVE been reading the new Oxford Hymn-book, 
with more interest, it must be confessed, than 
satisfaction. The principle of the book has been 
to restore as far as possible the original read- 
ings. I say " as far as possible " because I have 
not tested more than a certain number of in- 
stances, but in all these cases the original has 
been restored. 

Now this is a theory which it is very easy to 
justify in principle, but not so easy to carry out 
in practice. It may be asked, by those who de- 
fend the restoration of the original text, what 
right any one has to alter, without the express 
leave of the writer, the words of his hymns, and 
to print those hymns with the names of the 
authors appended, as their work, when in many 
cases the alterations are numerous and consider- 
able. No one, it may be urged, would venture 
to treat any other form of literature in this 
fashion. Of course that argument at first sight 
appears to be unanswerable. But a good many 
considerations may be brought forward on the 
other side. If hymns were merely a form of 
147 



148 Along the Road 

poetry, and if a hymn-book were only a sacred 
anthology for private reading, alterations are 
certainly not justified. But a hymn-book is a 
great desfl more than that. It is a service-book; 
that is to say that, in the first place, hymns are 
to take their place in the worship of the Church, 
and to be sung to music; and in the second place, 
what is far more important, the worshippers are 
not merely required to study the thoughts and 
utterances of the writers, but to adopt them as 
their own. They are required to take the words 
on their own lips, to sing them in concert witli 
others, and to use them as the expression of their 
own beliefs and emotions and aspirations. 

This at once introduces a new feature into the 
case; one cannot only consider the rights, so to 
speak, of the original writers, but one has to 
consider the rights of the congregations who will 
have to use the words. Hymns, indeed, may be 
said to pass out of the possession of the writers, 
and to become the inheritance of the users. 

Let us take a very simple case first. If a word 
were to acquire some horrible or even flippant 
association, it would be absurd to insist on its 
continued use in a hymn-book, if it were to pain 
or amuse the congregations that used it. It 
would surely be right to substitute a less of- 
fensive word. The use, for instance, of the word 
" bloody " in eighteenth-century hymns is a case 
in point. The word has acquired low and pro- 
fane associations. It may be regretted, but it 



Hymns 149 

is the fact. Surely no one would object to 
some innocuous word like " crimson " being sub- 
stituted? Again, in Roch of Ages there occurs, 
ill the original, the disagreeable expression: 
" When my eyestrings break in death," which is 
a touch of ghastly realism. The Oxford book 
restores this, but to my mind there is something 
pedantic and even irritating in expecting people 
who have learned to love the simple and solemn 
alteration, '^ when my eyelids close in death," to 
substitute for it the earlier version; I would go 
further, and say that there is something really 
shocking in the idea of expecting a congregation 
of hundreds of persons to sing the dreadful words 
in public together. 

It may freely be admitted that the compilers 
of Hymns Ancient and Modern went further than 
they need have done in altering hymns, and 
showed an unreasonable terror of expressions 
that were in the least degree quaint or uncon- 
ventional. But the fact remains that Hymns 
Ancient and Modern has now been used for 
many j^ears by thousands of worshippers, and 
that the very alterations are now invested with 
countless sacred and beautiful associations. It 
seems to me a harsh and even stupid thing 
deliberately to set aside and ignore that fact 
in the interest of what is only a piece of literary 
recension. The general and decided disapproval 
with which the latest revision of Hymns Ancient 
and Modern has been received ought to have been 



150 Along the Road 

a lesson to all revisers. In that last revision, 
certain familiar and favourite tunes which people 
had learned to love, and to connect with solemn 
and affectinsj occasions, were wantonly omitted, 
because they did not come up to the musical 
standard of a few purists. In matters which 
concern emotion, one cannot venture on such dic- 
tation; and to make strict taste the arbiter in 
a matter of the kind is a gross violation of a 
much more important kind of taste. The same 
principle applies to the words of hymns and songs 
which generations of men and women have 
learned to love. It is the emotion they evoke 
that matters, not the literary quality of them. 
Hymns and tunes alike become a national pos- 
session, and one may no more eject them from 
manuals meant for general use, on grounds of 
strict taste, than one might cast out monuments 
from Westminster Abbey because they were not 
in consonance with the Gothic design. 

Now let me quote a few examples, taken quite 
at random. In Charles Wesley's hymn, " Hark I 
the herald angels sing, Glory to the new-born 
King," the original ran: 

" Hark how all the welkin rings 
Glory to the King of Kings." 

There was possibly no need to alter this, though 
the word " welkin " is not in use, and it is a 
pity to have to use, in a hymn for a universal 



Hymns 151 

festival, a word which has no associations. More- 
over, the word " welkin " has not in itself a very 
dignified or harmonious sound. But the altera- 
tions are quite innocuous — indeed beautiful. And 
further they are old alterations, only fourteen 
years subsequent in date to the original. If the 
original had been the altered form, the suggestion 
to substitute " Hark how all the welkin rings " 
for ^' Hark ! the herald angels sing " would have 
been received with indignation and derision. And 
since generations have grown up with some of 
its brightest and happiest associations connected 
with the later form, it seems to me injurious to 
insist on restoration, like cutting down a beauti- 
ful creeper to show an old wall. It is so strange 
that people do not understand that accretions 
and associations form half the beauty of an an- 
cient thing, whatever it be, a poem in words or 
a poem in stone. 

Again, in Milman's hymn for Palm Sunday, 
" Ride on, ride on in majesty," one of the original 
lines was " Thine humble beast pursues his road." 
It is a poor and undignified line. " Humble 
beast " suggests " humble vehicle," and the para- 
phrase for an ass is essentially a journalist de- 
vice. A reviser very sensibly substituted : 

" Saviour meek, pursue Thy road," 

which is a very unexceptionable alteration, and 
may well be left in possession. 



152 Along the Road 

In the old lijmn (1505) "O Lord, turn not 
thy face [away] from me," the second line, as 
revised in 1708, runs " who lie in woeful state '• 
— not a very effective line, but quite in keeping 
with the archaic character of the hymn. But the 
Oxford revisers must needs restore the original 
line, " From him that lieth prostrate," which from 
a musical point of view is most objectionable, as 
it involves an ugly slur on '' lieth " and a shifting 
of accent on " prostrate," which is now accented 
on the first syllable. But worse than this. There 
was a stanza most judiciously omitted, containing 
the impossible line: 

" I am sure Thou canst tell." 

And this has been solemnly restored, though by 
any musical notation w^hich throws the accents 
on to " am " and " Thou " the line becomes simply 
grotesque. 

Again, in the hymn, " As now the sun's de- 
clining rays," the original ran : 

" Lord, on the Cross Thine arms were stretched 
To draw us to the sky," 

which is both unpoetical and unreal. One cannot 
be drawn upwards by extended arms, but by 
hands extended downwards. The first revisers 
substituted the simple and beautiful line, " To 
draw Thy peojjle nigh " ; but this line, which is 



Hymns 153 

mi improvement from every point of view, and 
familiar as well, has been ejected for the sake of 
the unfortunate original. 

In Ken's evening hymn, one of the original lines, 
in the stanza " Teach me to live," ran : 

" To die, that this vile body may 
Rise glorious on the awful day." 

" Vile body " is a false note, and a conventional 
phrase. The alteration: 

" Teach me to die, that so I may " 

is one of those simple alterations which improves 
the balance of the stanza, and which one cannot 
help fancying would have even commended itself 
to the author. Nothing whatever can be gained 
by restoring the original text, and no one can 
be either edified or pleased by the change. 

Let me give one more instance. In Faber's 
beautiful hymn: 

" come and mourn with me awhile," 

the original second line was : 

" See Mary calls us to His side." 

This line might easily appear objectionable to 
congregations with certain traditions, and the 
alterations, 

" come ye to the Saviour's side," 



154 Along the Road 

^yllicll is in itself more dignified and beautiful, 
as not in any wa}^ diverting the thought from 
the central idea, is a good one in every way. 

Throughout the same hymn, Faber wrote in 
every case, ^' Jesus, our Love, is crucified." ThiK 
refrain, though beautiful in itself, would not be, 
perhaps, acceptable to peoi)le not familiar with 
the tone of the ancient hymnolog}', and might 
seem to have a sentimental tinge, not in thought 
perhaps or contemplation, but when applied to a 
hymn for public worship. No objection could be 
raised to the substitution of " Jesus, our Lord," 
and the restoration of the original phrase is very 
questionable. Then, in the last stanza, the original 
hymn ran: 

" A broken heart Love's cradle is; 
Jesus, our Love, is crucified." 

This is a beautiful thought beautifully expressed ; 
but the metaphor is not a simple one, while the 
expression may be held to be rather of a literary 
or poetical type, fit for reflection rather than 
ascription. It seems to me that the alteration : 

" Lord Jesu, may we love and weep, 
Since Thou for us art crucified," 

is simpler and even more moving, and I can well 
understand that any one who had grown familiar 
with it would greatly resent the reintroduction 
of the original phrase. 



Hymns 155 

Tt would be easy to multiply instances, but I 
have said enough to illustrate the principle I wisli 
to enunciate, which is of a democratic and even 
socialistic type; that when the use of a thing is 
established, it cannot be tyrannously interfered 
with by pri\ileged persons. We may regret the 
accident which led to an alteration becoming 
jniblic property, but we can no more restore pri- 
vate rights than we can alienate a right-of-way. 
Hymns cannot be treated like ordinary literature, 
but have to be regarded as a little part of social 
life, in which custom and use justly override both 
literary and artistic canons. Thus we have to 
realise that while we may learn lessons from the 
past, and do our best to prevent mistakes in the 
future, we must accept the past, and profit by 
it as far as we can. We have to recognise, in 
dealing with hymns, that we are in the presence 
of the forces of tradition and association, which 
are stronger and more important than literary 
maxims, and questions of artistic propriety and 
impropriety. 



PREACHERS AND PREACHING 

I REMEMBER reading a description of a famous 
preacher of the seventeenth century, whose ser- 
mons as a rule took an hour and a half to deliver, 
whose chief merit was that he kept the congrega- 
tion in a perpetual ^' twitter," or, as we should 
say, in an agreeable condition of interested ex- 
pectation ; and I recollect, too, a caricature of a 
famous eighteenth-century preacher, who is repre- 
sented craning out from his cushions, with his 
arms uplifted over a terror-stricken and gaping 
congregation, with the words, " Ye shall be slain, 
all the sort of you," issuing from his mouth. 

T^nderneath were the words : ^' Mr. gives 

liis congregation a good shaking over the pit.'' 
Perhaps the reason why sermons are not so much 
appreciated nowadays is that they are too polite, 
too amiable. They result neither in twitter nor 
in panic. I do not know that I should wish for 
the old methods back again, but T feel that the 
duty of boldly rebuking vice is not perhaps suf- 
ficiently kept in view. A friend of mine was 
once talking to an old family butler about a son 
of the house who had lately taken orders, and 
156 



Preachers and Preaching 157 

gone to be a curate in a colliery village. The 
old man said: " Mr. Frank has got himself into 
sad trouble bj preaching against drunkenness; 
now 'e should 'ave stuck to the doctrine, sir. 
That would 'ave done no 'arm ! " Perhaps the 
great defect of sermons at the present day is that 
they are lacking in practical shrewdness, and aim 
at doing no harm. After all, it is easy to be 
critical, but the difficulties of the situation are 
great. As with services, the problem is not acute 
in urban districts. With a staff of clergy, and a 
large and possibly shifting congregation — many 
of whom are hardly known to each other — and, 
moreover, with the possibility of obtaining the 
help of neighbouring clergy, the difficulties are 
led need to a minimum, though no doubt the diffi- 
culty of obtaining time for adequate preparation 
still remains. In a town parish there is, or need 
be, no lack of novelty — and familiarity is the 
fruitful mother of inattention — and, moreover, 
there are no social complications to fear. But 
in a country parish, where every one knows all 
about every one else's affairs, it is a serious thing 
to expect a man to deliver a discourse twice a 
Sunday, year in and year out, and to bring the 
Gospel home to his neighbours. It was easy 
enough for a man like Charles Kingsley, burning 
with zeal, brimming over with human interest, 
and with a perpetual flow of vigorous and racy 
language, to make truth vital and inspiring. But 
how is a man in a country parish, with no great 



158 Along the Road 

gift of speech, and perhaps no great knowledge 
of human nature, to be expected to deliver in the 
course of the year a number of discourses that 
would amount, if printed, to more than one bulky 
octavo volume, and yet to preserve any freshness 
of presentation, any moral or spiritual stimulus? 
The difficulty is increased by the fact that if he 
preaches directly and forcibly against some moral 
fault, he will be supposed to have some particular 
person in view; and the mischief is that he is 
sure to have some one in view, for where is he 
to make his sermons if not out of his own experi- 
ence? The only way is to speak with tenderness 
as well as indignation, and without personal 
anger or bitterness — and this is not an easy 
matter. 

I should like to make a few practical sug- 
gestions as to how the difficulty might be met. 
In the first place, I cannot see why the clergy 
should not at once be relieved from the duty of 
preaching twice on a Sunday. The sermons might 
be alternately in the morning and the evening. 
This would certainly be welcomed as a great 
relief by many of the clergy, and possibly even 
by some of the congregations ; for I have observed 
that the highest praise that can be given by many 
laymen to a clergyman is that he preaches short 
sermons ; and to have to listen Sunday after Sun- 
day to a preacher whose eloquence one can neither 
stem nor controvert is a real trial in these restless 
days to the fidgety layman. But if this change 



Preachers and Preaching 159 

is impossible, I think it is a great pity that the 
morning sermon is not more often made a 
simple exposition of Scripture. I believe that if 
the clergy went quietly through the Bible, read- 
ing a good deal and expounding a little, saying 
just enough to make the circumstances clear and 
the narrative or the pro^jhecy intelligible, it 
would be much welcomed by many congregations. 
The other sermon ought, I believe, to be entirely 
practical — an application of the principles of the 
Gospel to ,tne thousand and one little problems 
of daily life. * A man ought to speak plainly 
about grave faults, for people, even well-meaning 
people, get very drowsy over their faults, and 
very apt to draw their own picture with the lines 
and shadows left out; and he might speak, too, 
of such things as talk and reading, of punctuality 
and orderliness, of courtesy and good-humour, of 
sorrow and sickness, of money and work, and all 
the endless adventures and qualities that weave 
the web of life. Of course, it is difficult to speak 
of these things very strikingly and forcibly — 
but that is not needed ; the point is to speak from 
experience, and not out of books. And it would 
be well, too, if the clergy practised more ex- 
tempore preaching. The spoken w^ord, however 
halting and imperfect, has a power that no 
written discourse ever has. 

I believe that one way in which matters of 
conduct might be brought home to people with- 
out giving personal offence — which is a very real 



i6o Along the Road 

danger iu little societies — would be by using 
biographical materials. 

I have heard of late a good many sermons in 
out-of-the-way places, and I must frankly confess 
that on the whole I have wondered to find them 
as good as they are, considering all the diffi- 
culties ; for no doubt the attitude of the ordinary 
layman in the matter is both captious and exact- 
ing. He is apt to expect a mild, conventional, 
almost feminine, line from a clergyman. He 
grumbles at that ; and when the clergy are vigor- 
ous and stimulating, he shakes his head and talks 
about Revivalism. There are faults on both sides, 
no doubt. But I have often thought that there 
can be few more disagreeable and humiliating 
things in the world, than for a clergyman who has 
spent time and trouble on a sermon, and who 
desires to bring home what he has to say to his 
flock, to see one or more of his hearers deliberately 
compose themselves to sleep before his eyes. I 
have felt sometimes that were I in the pulpit 
I should publicly remonstrate against such 
discourteous usage. Yet I have never heard an 
offender apologise for such a breach of decorum, 
except in a perfunctory way, as though the act 
was both natural and humorous. 

My conclusion, then, would be this: If a man 
has the art of impressive statement, or if he has 
the subtler charm of originality which enables 
him to present old truths in a new and arresting 
light, the thing is easy; for it must not be for- 



Preachers and Preaching i6i 

gotten that it is not enough for a pastor to warn 
and startle — he must also be able to attract and 
guide and build up; but if he has not this power, 
as long as he is sincerely and genuinely in earnest, 
and as long as he is content to try his best, care- 
fully observing when he succeeds in commanding 
the attention of his hearers, and when he fails 
and why, he may sow the seed of truth. But 
perhaps the best consolation of all is that ex- 
ample is better than precept, and that work tells 
even more than words; so that the result may 
be, as Browning says: 

" You are a sermon, though your sermon 's nought." 

It was to such a sermon that I once listened 
as an undergraduate — the fumbling utterance of 
a nervous but sincere preacher. Coming out, T 
said jocosely to a friend : " Do you feel the better 
for that?'' " Xo," he said gravely, looking at 
me; '^ I feel a great deal worse." And then I was 
ashamed of my question, and knew that the 
preacher had not spoken in vain. 



AKT AND LIFE 

I HAVE an old friend who is a writer, I was going 
to say like myself, but I ought rather to say un- 
like myself. We often discuss the dreadful and 
delightful business of writing — dreadful or de- 
lightful according as you are rowing against the 
stream or with it. I do not mean that we dis- 
cuss our tools and habits — whether we work with 
pen or pencil, sitting up at a table or sprawled 
in an arm-chair. But we discuss the craft, or 
rather the art, of it all. The conclusion which 
he always draws — perhaps I do not wholly agree 
with him — is that I am only a craftsman, while 
he is an artist; or, possibly, it is rather that I 
am an amateur, while he is a professional. He 
certainly tells me some very astonishing things 
— that he has an absolutely exact plan in his 
mind, for instance, before he begins to write, and 
that he knows to a page, and almost to a line, 
how much he is going to write. Now, I have a 
general scheme in my head, of course, but I never 
know till I actually write how long my sections 
are going to be. He derides me when I say this, 
and he asserts that it is like a sculptor saying 

162 



Art and Life 163 

that he never knows till he begins a statue how 
big the limbs are going to be, and whether one 
of the legs is not going to be twice as long as 
the other. To that I reply that I am of the 
opinion of President Lincoln, when his Army 
Council was discussing the right proportions of 
a soldier. One of the party said, " How long 
ought a man's legs to be?" "If you ask my 
opinion," said Lincoln, " I believe they ought to 
be long enough to reach to the ground I " 

Then he laughs, and tells me that this is the 
whole art of writing, to estimate one's material 
exactly and to use it all up; and that the words 
must follow the writer, not the writer the words. 
To which I reply that with me the thing, what- 
ever it is, comes up like a flower, and makes its 
own structure; and then he says that I have no 
respect for form. 

I have, as a matter of fact, a great respect for 
form. 1 think that everything depends upon how 
one says things. Writers are permanent or tran- 
sitory in virtue of style, and style only. Great 
and deep thoughts confusedly or clumsily ex- 
pressed have not a quarter of the chance of be- 
ing read, or of lasting, as light and delicate 
thoughts beautifully and charmingly expressed. 
The thoughts of poets, for instance, are not only 
not, as a rule, new or intricate thoughts, but they 
are rather thoughts of which we say, when we 
read them embalmed in fine verse, " Yes, I have 
thought that vaguely a hundred times, but could 



1 64 Along the Road 

not pnt it into shape!" And the greatness of a 
writer depends almost entirely upon the extent 
to which he can make people recognise their own 
thoughts, and see in a flash how beautiful they 
are, when they have seemed homely and common- 
place before. We most of us can recognise the 
beauty of a face or of a form, when we see it 
adoiMied and bravely apparelled. But the poet 
is the man who can see the beauty of the simplest 
folk through the stains of toil and the most 
workaday costume. 

I suppose that I think more of the beauty of 
language than the proportions and balance of 
thought. And, indeed, a certain wildness and 
luxuriance of shape and outline is pleasant to 
me. If the form of a piece of writing is too 
apparent, it seems to me like a clipped yew tree. 
I had rather see a tree growing like a tree, than 
cut and carved into the shape of a peacock or 
a vase. 

Our neighbours the French have got a much 
stronger sense of literary form than we in Eng- 
land have. But in their stories and novels, 
though I can often see a certain masterly hand- 
ling of the form, I am often more oppressed than 
pleased by it. It seems to me that they lose the 
freedom and the naturalness of life thereby. Life 
and character do not conform to artistic pro- 
portions, and if one sits down to depict life and 
character in a book, one ought, I feel, to follow 
the natural laws of life and character. If the 



Art and Life 165 

book gives me the feeling of the author's con- 
trolling hand, then I begin to feel that it is a 
show of puppets which dance on wires tied to 
the showman's fingers. It is a pretty perform- 
ance, and wonderful in a way; but I am not in 
search of that kind of wonder. It is the mystery, 
the inconsequence of life, that I admire, not the 
deftness of the performer's conjuring. And thus 
I like great loose, vivid books, like Tolstoy's 
noA^els, which give me no cramped feeling of form, 
but seem like the pageant of life itself. I do 
not want everything accounted for and wound 
neatly up. I want the thing to be as big, as 
ragged, as untidy as life itself, or at least to 
give me a sense of bigness and untidiness. 

It seems to me that it is a very useless busi- 
ness making literary rules. These rules are, after 
all, only rules deduced from the work of great 
authors; and then a new author appears and 
knocks the old rules to pieces, and the critics 
set to work and make a new set of rules. Take 
the case of Ruskin. When he was writing his 
early books, full of close arguments and neat sub- 
divisions, with here and there a burst of elo- 
quence, flashing and curdling like a falling billow, 
he was doing excellent work no doubt. But those 
earlier books have not a quarter of the charm of 
Fors Clavigera or Prceterita, where there is no 
sense of form at all, and which ebb and flow with 
a delicious and unconstrained beauty, like the 
actual thoughts of a man unfolding before one's 



i66 Along the Road 

eyes. Of course, by that time, Ruskin was a 
great master of words; but the charm of the 
later books consists in their perfect vitality and 
realit3^ In Fors Clavigera, which must be the 
despair of artists, he set down just what came 
into his head, and as it came; and not only did 
he not know, when he sat down to write, tlie 
exact proportions of his chapter, he often did not 
know, I think, what he was going to say at all. 

What I really believe makes the difference 
between artistic writers and natural writers is 
this. The artistic writer is thinking of his per- 
formance, of its gracefulness, its charm, its shape; 
and I think he must have in his mind the praise 
of the trained critic, though he obeys, no doubt, 
his own artistic conscience. A great writer who 
had a touch of cynicism about him said that the 
people who thought that authors wrote for the 
sake of applause made a great mistake — that what 
they wrote for was mone}^, and that applause 
was only valuable because it showed that you 
might be going to take up a good collection. 

There is truth in this, because, if the artist is 
thinking of his performance, then he is like any 
other professional — the pianist, the conjuror, the 
dancer — who is bound, above all things, to please; 
and he knows that too much originality is a 
dangerous thing, because people are more pleased 
by seeing and hearing what they expect to see 
and hear than by seeing or hearing something 
that they do not expect to see or hear. But 



Art and Life 167 

the other kind of writer is thinking more of 
what he is going to say, and the possible effect 
of It upon the minds and hearts of others. He 
has, of course, to study charm and impressive- 
ness, but he does that, not for the sake of the 
charm or the impressiveness, but for the sake of 
the thoughts that he cannot withhold. Perhaps 
he has seen some delicious place, and wants to 
share his sense of its beauty with others ; or some 
idea flashes into his mind which seems to link 
together a number of scattered thoughts and in- 
terpret them; and then he wishes others to have 
the same delight of intuition. Or else he sud- 
denly finds, in the light of experience, that some 
hard, dry maxim is terribly or beautifully true 
after all, and he realises that the old proverb is 
not simply a dull statement, but a crystal shaped 
from a thousand human hopes and fears. 

My own feeling about writing is that it is all 
a sharing of joy or sorrow with other hearts. Of 
course, if one were absolutely simple and un- 
affected, one could talk of such things to friends, 
or even to the people one meets in railway- 
carriages or on farm-roads. But they might not 
understand or care; or they might think me im- 
pertinent or crazy. And then their looks and 
remarks would disconcert me to such an extent 
that I should think myself crazy too. But one 
can put all the glory and wonder of these things, 
and, indeed, all the sorrow and bitterness too, 
into a book, and hope that it may fall into the 



i68 Along the Road 

right hands. Though, of course, one runs the 
risk that it may fall into the wrong hands ; and 
some reviewers may tell you their opinion, as 
many reviewers have told me at different times 
and with very varying degrees of courtesy, that 
I am a fool for my pains — and that I am quite 
prepared to believe. But such rebukes never dis- 
concert a writer who believes in what he has to 
say and desires to say it, because he knows he 
cannot please everybody, and he simply perceives 
that the book has fallen into the wrong hands. 
I wrote a book the other day, and a reviewer in 
the Guardian, which is a very sensible and re- 
spectable paper, headed his review, " More about 
Mr. Benson's Soul," and said that it was a literary 
indecency and a literary crime, and an insult to 
my readers to write such books. Well, I am 
sorry that the reviewer should feel insulted. If 
I knew his name I would gladly express my re- 
gret. But he need read no more of my books, 
and I am afraid that I cannot pretend that I 
shall cease to write them. I wish, indeed, that 
he would tell me more about his soul, and then 
I might be persuaded to adopt his much higher 
ideal of literary decency. I might even think him 
reasonable, instead of thinking him, as I do now, 
rather elaborately rude. But I do not for a mo- 
ment dispute his right to be rude, for I spoke 
first; and if one speaks in a book, there are sure 
to be ill-bred people within hearing! 

But I fear 1 have gone all wrong about form 



Art and Life 169 

again ! I am not using up my material properly, 
and the figure is all out of shape. What I was 
going to say is that what I myself value in a 
book more than anything else is a sense of vitality 
and reality. I like the feeling of contact with 
another human soul, and I even value this in 
the Guardian review, because the writer is cer- 
tainly speaking his mind. But, of course, one 
likes one's company to be congenial, and the sort 
of soul that I like to feel myself in contact with 
is one "v^ho is full of the wonder and mystery of 
all life, even if it be a little oppressed and be- 
wildered by it; one that desires beauty and 
gentleness and peace and order and labour and 
good-humour and sense to prevail. I do not care 
so much about being brought into contact with 
self-satisfied and confident people, who use the 
world as a kind of bath to splash about in, and 
scoff at the idea of not seizing and enjoying w^hat- 
ever one is bold enough or strong enough to take 
away from weaker or more timid persons. I 
have had a very fortunate life myself, and more 
prosperity than I have deserved, though I hope 
not at the expense of other people. But still I 
have been confronted, not once or twice, with 
very grim, severe, terrible, and sorrowful things, 
some of which have eventually done me good, but 
some of which have simply crushed and maimed 
me. I have not found any explanation of these 
things except in a faith that has learned, however 
faintly and tremblingly, to believe that the end 



170 Along the Road 

is not yet. And I have seen horrible calamities 
in others' lives of which there seems no reasonable 
or hopeful interpretation. And what I desire 
most of all is that men and women who have suf- 
fered themselves and have seen others suffer hope- 
lessly, and who yet have found some great and 
beautiful explanation, should tell us what that 
explanation is. 

Among such thoughts as these, no doubt one 
does grow careless, and culpably careless, of form 
and proportion, and all the other things on which 
the literary artist sets so much store. And there 
is no excuse for carelessness ! 

I was reading the other day a curious and 
interesting passage of Suetonius about the Em- 
peror Nero. Nero was an artist at heart, who 
had, so far as we know, little power of expression, 
and was insane, too, with inherited insanity. We 
all know what a shipwreck he made of his own 
life and his empire alike. But in this passage 
we read how he had just been told of a great 
revolt in Gaul. He saw the artistic aspect of it 
all. He was sitting after dinner very comfort- 
ably with some of his abominable friends, and he 
said in a kind of ecstasy that he had made up 
his mind, and he was going out at once to the 
province; that the moment he got there he would 
go out unarmed between the opposing hosts, and 
do nothing but weep, and that the rebels would 
be so touched that they would at once submit; 
and that on the following day they would all 



Art and Life 171 

have a tlianksgiving together, and sing an ode, 
which he would write — and that he would go 
away at once and write it. 

I do not know that anything came of the pro- 
ject or of the ode; but that seems to me a magni- 
ficent instance of a person who cares more about 
the artistic part he was himself going to play 
than about the result he wanted to achieve. There 
is the danger of the artistic point of view; and 
though I enjoy fine craftsmanship with all my 
heart, and can be set all aglow by an ode, I do 
not want to think that this is the end of art. 
The thing must be said beautifully and impres- 
sively, because people will not listen if it is not. 
But the end of it is the criticism of life, the 
comparison of experience, and the sharing of joy. 



SYMPATHY 

There is nothing that differentiates men and 
women more than the extent to which they need 
the sympathy of others, and the nse which they 
make of it. With some people, under the shadow 
of loss, disaster, discredit, or illness, the sym- 
pathy of others sustains and consoles them, pours 
balm into the wound. But there are other spirits, 
not by any means necessarity more brave or self- 
sufficient, who do not under such circumstances 
either require or desire sympathy. Their one in- 
stinct, in the presence of a catastrophe which is 
irreparable, is to forget it as far as possible, to 
combat remorse and grief, not by facing the 
situation, but by distracting themselves from 
dwelling upon it, and by flinging themselves as 
far as possible into normal activities. Person- 
ally, I find that, if I am in trouble of any kind, 
the most helpful companions are not those who 
by word and look testify their sympathy. It is 
only an added burden of sorrow to think that 
one^s own private cares are lying heavy on other 
hearts ; while the sympathy one receives tends to 
turn one's thoughts upon the hurt, which is often 

172 



Sympathy 173 

trying to heal in its own way. The most sus- 
taining influence at such times is that of tran- 
quil people, to whom one knows that one may 
appeal for practical help, if one requires it, but 
who will otherwise tacitly ignore the background 
of anxiety, and behave in a perfectly normal and 
natural manner. Because the best tonic of all 
is that one should try to behave normally too, 
and to act so that the shadow of one's own suf- 
fering should not rest upon other lives. Of 
course, there are times, in grief and anxiety and 
pain, when it is an immense comfort to be able 
to speak frankly of what is in one's mind. But 
one wants to choose one's own times of need for 
doing that, and not to be encouraged to do it 
to the detriment of the wholesome distractions 
which relieve the weight of care. 

This difference comes out most strongly in the 
case of illness. There are some people who like 
to be inquired after, to detail their symptoms, to 
indulge their sense of discomfort. I do not think 
that this tendency is one that ought always to 
be repressed, because people of that type, if they 
are silenced, are apt to exaggerate their pains 
by solitary brooding. On the other hand, there 
are people who like to be told that they look 
well, when they are feeling ill, and on whom such 
a statement acts like a suggestion, restoring the 
hope and energy with which they battle with 
malaise. 

Of course, there are times, as in the case of a 



174 Along the Road 

bereavement, when the danger is that men and 
women feel drearily and hopelessly the loneliness 
and isolation that the loss of a dear one brings; 
then undoubtedly the love that such a sorrow 
evokes and makes audible does flow with healing 
power into the gap. Those first days of grief, 
when the mourner, in the grey dawn, has to face 
the desolation and the silence, are very hard to 
bear without the tangible presence of human 
sympathy. But even thus sympathy should be 
as a medicine and not as a diet. As we are 
constituted, a burden must be borne alone; it 
cannot be shifted, it cannot be carried vicariously. 
The loss is there, and the duty of others is not 
to minimise that loss, but to keep clearly before 
the sufferer the fact that all is not lost; that 
there are other claims and duties, other hopes 
and joys felt, which no sorrow must be allowed 
to obliterate. 

The difficulty, of course, both for the sufferer 
and for the friends who would help if they knew 
how, is to decide at what point the indulgence 
becomes unwholesome. To demand of a man or 
a woman that they should at once, after some de- 
vastating stroke or under a grievous anxiety, 
resume their place in the world and bear their 
accustomed burdens, is sometimes simply putting 
an additional strain on the wounded spirit. It 
is like insisting on a sprained limb being used 
too soon. I often think of the splendid words 
of Sir Andrew Barton in the old ballad : 



Sympathy 175 

" I '11 but lie down and bleed awhile, 
And then I '11 rise and fight again." 

The most that one's best friends can do is to 
siio,j2:est and encourage a return to activity; they 
must know when to hold their hand. Instinct is 
a good guide up to a certain point. The wise 
physician, the perceptive friend must try to 
discern when the natural grief becomes a morbid 
indulgence. 

I think that men are sometimes wiser than 
women at seeing when the ordinary activities 
ought to be resumed, perhaps because their sym- 
pathies are more limited. The heart of a woman 
goes out much more instinctively to anything 
that sorrows and suffers — indeed, the normal man 
tends, perhaps, rather to dislike and to shun the 
presence of anything maimed and broken. He 
will often be generous enough in cases where prac- 
tical help can be given, but has not the instinct 
of fending to the same degree; and the sight of 
suffering often gives him a vague and helpless 
unhappiness, so that he longs to get out of an 
atmosphere which mars his own tranquillity with- 
out enabling him to be effective. Most men like 
to do their work in a half-humorous spirit, and 
humour is a quality which is apt to have an ugly 
and a cynical look in the presence of sorrow. But 
the woman 

" whose instinct is to wreathe 
An arm round any suffering thing," 



176 Along the Road 

is sometimes so solicitous, so pitiful, so unutter- 
ably tender-hearted, that the bracing element dis- 
appears. The fact is that we need both sympathy 
and firmness; and the difficulty is to know ichen 
we must rise to fight again. 

The great truth which lies behind Christian 
Science is not the unreasonable attempt to treat 
the phenomena of grief and suffering as unreal, 
but the noble truth which underlies it that the 
victory remains with hope and joy. The spirit 
must fight suffering with its own weapons, and 
call the vigorous forces of life into play. Most 
of us, even in weakness and defeat, are capable 
of more endurance than we feel. 

What is undoubtedly a far harder business for 
most of us is to sympathise generously and sin- 
cerely with joy and happiness and success. We 
are apt to feel that happiness is so delightful a 
thing that it needs no sympathy; and thus we 
often tend to spoil our friends' triumphs and 
joys by giving them but a brief and formal recog- 
nition, and turning to more congenial things. It 
is a great strain to some to live cheerfully with 
a very robust and cheerful person, especially if 
he demands an audience for his ecstasies. But 
to show sympathy with the joys of others, even 
if they need it less, is a very necessary piece of 
self-discipline. In reading the lives of great men, 
I do not think there emerges any quality quite 
so splendid as that of generous and ungrudging 
admiration for the successes of others. We most 



Sympathy 177 

of us, T suppose, in our hearts desire some sort 
of iufluence and power; it is wonderful what 
strange paths we choose to arrive at that goal! 
Many of us think that harsh and derisive critic- 
ism of the performances of others gives the 
hearers a sense of our own superiority; but even 
from the lowest motives of insincere diplomacy, 
many a man who gets nothing but discredit and 
dislike for his disapproval and depreciation of 
others' performances, could stride swiftly into 
influence by a royal distribution of applause. 1 
do not, of course, mean that we should acquire a 
habit of bedaubing everything with disingenuous 
unction; but, in criticism, there is very little to 
be said for ingenious fault-finding. Poor work 
in all departments finds its own level w^ith won- 
derful rapidity; but we should be eager to recog- 
nise with ready impartiality and sincere approval 
any particle of pure gold. 

But, of course, the real difficulty, as in all 
spiritual things, lies deeper yet. If a man has 
cause to recognise, by mistakes and failures, that 
he is cold and ungenerous by nature, what is he 
to do? It surely makes matters only worse to 
add hypocrisy to his other deficiencies? Is he 
daily to pretend to a generosity which he does 
not possess? Is he insincerely to praise what he 
sincerely despises? 

Well, if a man could answer that question, he 
would hold the secret of life in his hand. The 
most one can say is that it is something to know 



178 Along the Road 

and recoguise one's deficiencies, and still more 
to hate and mourn them. So we advance slowly ; 
and, better still, there is an old-fashioned thing 
called the Grace of God, which we can, if we will 
try, admit to our narrow hearts, as the lake pours 
into the confined stream-channel. To do all we 
can, and yet not to feel that we have only our- 
selves to depend upon, that is the simple secret 
which has turned weak spirits before now into 
men valiant in fight. 



JEALOUSY 

The word jealousy is one that has changed its 
meaning in the last three hundred years. It has 
acquired an almost wholly eyil sense, and is ap- 
plied in most cases to matters of affection. If 
one describes a dog, for instance, as a jealous 
dog, one means that it resents any notice being 
taken of other dogs, 'and eyen dislikes seeing its 
master or mistress pay attention or giye caresses 
to other human beings. If one says that a man 
or a woman is of a jealous nature, it would be 
understood to mean that they desired to con- 
centrate the affections of their circle exclusiyely 
upon themselyes. And it so undoubtedly now 
implies a mean, sinful, and undesirable quality 
that I haye sometimes thought that it is almost 
a pity that it should be allowed to stand in 
Scripture as an epithet applied to God. In the 
Second Commandment, for instance, '^ For I the 
Lord thy God am a jealous God,'' the words refer 
to the Diyine indignation against idolatry; and 
when Elijah uses the word of his own feeling 
against the worshippers of Baal, it is used with 
no sense of personal resentment. And it still can 
179 



i8o Along the Road 

be used in that particular sense, as when a man 
says that he is more jealous for some one else's 
honour than he is for his own. Still, it seems a 
pity that a word should stand as an epithet ap- 
])lied to God, when one would seldom apply such 
an epithet to another human bein^i^ without the 
intention of implying censure on an odious and 
deplorable moral weakness. Of course it is al- 
ways difficult to express Divine qualities except 
by transferring terms which represent human 
emotion ; it may be said in this particular case 
that a simple explanation is all that is needed. 
But people who have become perfectly familiar 
with an expression do not always remember to 
furnish an explanation to those w^ho are not so 
familiar with it; and the fact remains that one 
acquiesces in a word being applied to God in 
Scripture which one would rarely use of a man 
witliout suggesting that it represented a feeling 
of which he ought to be ashamed. 

Jealousy is not one of the faults which are 
only the shadow of intelligence and reason; it is 
part of the animal inheritance of man. Faults 
such as untruthfulness, insincerity, irreverence, 
cynicism, are faults which come from the misuse 
of reason and imagination. But jealousy is 
simply a brutish fault, the selfish and spiteful 
dislike of seeing others enjoy what one would 
wish to enjoy oneself. It even goes deeper thau 
that, and becomes, when deeply rooted, a mere 
dislike of seeing other people happy, even though 



Jealously i8i 

one is happy oneself. There are people who like 
to spoil the grace of a gift by giving it grudgingly 
and conditionally; and worse still, there are peo- 
ple who like, if they can, to throw cold water 
over the enjoyment of others, and belittle or ex- 
plain away their successes. One of the most 
curious of well-known instances is the case of 
Mr. Barrett, the father of Mrs. Browning. He 
was a man who was passionately attached to his 
children ; he desired their love to such an extent 
that he could not bear to see them care for any 
one else. He refused his consent to his daughters' 
marriages, on the ground that it was ungrateful 
of them to wish to leave him. When Mrs. Brown- 
itig, knowing that it was impossible to hope that 
he would consent to her marriage with the poet, 
married him clandestinely, and went away to 
Italy, hoping that she might ultimately be for- 
given, her father never opened any of her letters, 
refused ever to see her again, and kept to his 
word. It was an intense grief to Mrs. Browning, 
but she never took a morbid view of the situation, 
and realised with supreme good sense that no 
human being has the right to cripple another's 
life, and to deny another the paramount gift of 
Avedded love. In Mr. Barrett's case jealousy al- 
most amounted to a monomania, though we are 
perhaps too ready nowadays to excuse the desper- 
ate indulgence of some one pernicious fault in a 
character, otherwise sane and balanced enough, 
on the grounds of some mental or moral warp. 



1 82 Along the Road 

One may perhaps so excuse it, if one finds a man 
acting constantly in some misguided manner, not 
onl}^ in defiance of principle, but against his own 
better aims and wishes. But it never seems to 
have occurred to Mr. Barrett, that he was acting 
unworthily or unjustly, or that he ought to have 
regulated his conduct by the principles of ethics 
or religion. 

When one sees jealousy manifested in the case 
of animals, it has its pathetic and even its beauti- 
ful side. Some friends of mine had an extraor- 
dinarily affectionate and devoted collie. One of 
the daughters was married, and when her first 
baby was born, she brought the child back to her 
parents' house on a visit. Poor Eover could not 
understand what had happened. A horrid little 
object, with no semblance of humanity, that could 
only sleep and squeak and bubble, that could not 
pat him, or walk with him, or throw sticks for 
him, had become the object of general attention 
and worship on the part of the whole household, 
previously so harmonious. The result was that 
after unavailing attempts to regain the affection 
he had somehow forfeited, after sitting hour by 
hour on the outskirts of the absorbed group 
wagging his tail, bringing sticks and envelopes, 
looking appealingly from one to the other, he 
despaired ; and when at last the dreadful change- 
ling was put down on a sofa, he went and bit 
its arm, not severely, but enough to show that 
he himself must not be entirely neglected. I am 



Jealousy 183 

thankful to say that my friends realised that 
they had sinned against constancy and affection ; 
and instead of having Rover destroyed or given 
away, they recognised his claims to attention; 
and he lived long enough to be the pet and faith- 
ful companion of the once-detested infant. 

But when the same sort of quality is indulged 
and encouraged by a reasonable human being, 
who is in a position to make his ill-temper felt 
by his circle, it becomes a very Satanic fault 
indeed. The worst of it is that it is a failing 
which often goes in the first place with a sen- 
sitive and deeply affectionate nature; and in the 
second place, it is a quality which friends and 
relations are apt to minister to, by giving way to 
it and by trying to remove occasions of offence; 
for the simple reason that the jealous person can 
often be so infinitely charming, when the fiend 
is not aroused, and can plunge a whole household 
into agitated depression, anxious conferences, and 
uncomfortable silences, if his suspicions are once 
kindled. 

Our complacent indifference to, and even our 
unconfessed pleasure in, the lesser misfortunes of 
other people is a very dark and evil inheritance. 
The other day I was out walking on the out- 
skirts of Cambridge, and a man just in front of 
me in the road had an accident with his bicycle; 
he tore his clothes, and he so dislocated his 
machine that portions of it projected in an ab- 
surd and grotesque manner. He was, moreover, 



1 84 Along the Road 

gifted by nature with a rueful and disconsolate 
visage. He wheeled his bicycle into the town, 
and I followed close behind him; for nearl}^ half 
a mile I did not see a single person who observed 
him who did not undisguisedly smile or even 
laugh at the spectacle. Yet I have no doubt that 
most of those who saw it were naturally good- 
humoured and kindly people enough. They would 
have taken endless trouble to help the man if he 
had been seriously hurt. They saw well enough 
that he was uncomfortable and discomposed ; that 
he had probably hurt himself, had incurred delay 
and possibly expense. They knew, no doubt, that 
they would themselves have greatly disliked, in 
a similar plight, being laughed at by every 
passer-by, and yet the instinct, combined with 
the absence of active imagination, was too strong, 
and the sight undoubtedly afforded them pleasure. 
It is this fact which undoubtedlj^ lies at the 
base of ordinary jealousy — the dreadful and 
humiliating fact that most of us are not genuinely 
pleased at the good fortune of others, or grieved 
at their calamities, but the other way. Of course, 
this does not hold true as a rule of one's inner- 
most circle, because the sorrows of those very 
near to us, even if we do not love them parti- 
cularly, are bound to overshadow us, or at least 
to inconvenience us ; while if a golden shower 
falls upon them, a little of it is apt to splash ovei* 
upon ourselves. I remember, indeed, when I was 
a boy, that I was told that one of my younger 



Jealousy 185 

brothers had been left a small fortune. It turned 
out afterwards not to be the case, as the legacy 
in question was shared between him and several 
others. But I recollect that my first feeling — 
and at the same time I must do myself the jus- 
tice to say that I was ashamed of it — was not 
one of pleasure. The unregenerate heart's first 
thought is, "Why him and not me?" I do not 
think so ill of human nature as to say that we 
are most of us deliberately pleased to hear of a 
misfortune happening to an acquaintance, but 
the feelings which it arouses are not as a rule 
those of unmixed sorrow; even the best people 
have a comfortable sense of heightened security 
resulting from the news, or at least a sense of 
thankfulness that the misfortune has not befallen 
themselves. But to be whole-heartedly glad of the 
success or good fortune of an acquaintance is a 
sign of a really generous and kindly nature. We 
do most of us need to discipline ourselves in the 
matter, and we ought to encourage and nurture 
by every means in our power the sense of shame 
and self-contempt which, after all, we do feel on 
reflection at the thought of how little we are 
affected by pleasure at others' good fortune, or 
by sorrow at others' calamities. The apostolic 
command to rejoice with those that rejoice and 
to weep with those that weep is by no means a 
platitude, but a very real and needful counsel of 
Christian conduct. 

Of course, the whole thing is largely a matter 



i86 Along the Road 

of temperament; but it is a dangerous thing to 
excuse oneself by saving, •' That is how I am 
made." The point is how to unmake oneself, how 
to change oneself! 

A friend of mine told me that he once went to 
pay a call at the house of a well-known man. 
He found in the drawing-room his host's wife and 
her unmarried sister, who lived with them, botli 
gifted, accomplished, and delightful women. They 
had a very interesting talk. Suddenly the front 
door opened and shut rather sharply below. A 
silence fell on the two charming ladies. Presently 
the sister-in-law excused herself and went out of 
the room. She came back a few moments later 
with rather an uneasy smile, and said in an under- 
tone to the wife, ^' He saj^s he won't have any tea. 
Perhaps you would just go down and see him." 
The wife went down, and remained away for some 
minutes. She came back and gave a little glance 
to her sister-in-law, who again slipped out of 
the room, and the conversation continued in 
rather a half-hearted manner. My friend decided 
that he had better go, and departed, aware that 
his departure was a relief. He said to me that 
it gave him a great sense of depression to think 
of the constant repetition of similar scenes. The 
husband was a man of moods, jealous, irritable, 
self-absorbed, and the sense of his possible dis- 
pleasure lay like a cloud in the background of 
the lives of these delightful women. He was apt 
to be vexed if things did not happen exactly as 



Jealousy 187 

lie wished, while at the same time he was annoyed 
it' any notice was taken of his moods, or if he 
thought he was being humoured and arranged for. 
^Vhat distresses one about such a case is the silly 
waste of happiness and peace that such a dis- 
position can cause, in a circle where there are 
all the materials for the best kind of domestic 
content. Yet the case is not a very uncommon 
one, and the cause a mere lack of self-discipline. 

The only hope for such temperaments is that 
they should become aware, early in life, of all 
the unhappiness they can create, and determine 
that, whatever they feel, they will behave with 
courtesy, justice, and kindness. The difficulty is 
that the most trivial incidents tend to confirm and 
increase such irritable suspicions, and there is, 
moreover, in jealous people, a sense of compla- 
cency in the thought of how much they can affect 
and influence the emotions of their circle. But 
such power is a very mean and selfish business. 
The worst of it is that it is perfectly possible 
for a man to despise and to condemn such con- 
duct in others, and yet to do the very same 
thing himself and to justify it, not without a 
certain contemptible pride in his own superior 
sensitiveness. 



HOME TRUTHS 

It is a question of great difficulty to what extent 
it is a privilege or a penalty of friendship to tell 
a friend of his faults. A great many people have 
one or more rather patent and obvious faults, not 
very serious perhaps — faults of temper, manner, 
demeanour, irritating tricks, disagreeable ways, 
tiresome economies, which cause friction and un- 
pleasantness, quite out of proportion, it may be, to 
the motive or quality which lies behind them. I 
once knew a man, for instance, who resorted to the 
most transparent devices in order not to pay his 
share of a vehicle or a hotel reckoning. He was 
a wealthy man, and I suppose that the habit was 
rooted in a desire for economy; but I am sure 
that he did not know that it was observed or 
commented upon, and if he had realised what very 
disagreeable remarks were made on the subject 
by his acquaintances he would have taken very 
good care to amend matters. And again, there 
are little habits, like the use of certain scents, 
insufficient ablutions, the flourishing of tooth- 
picks, hawkings, and throat-clearings, which may 
grow by mere habit highly offensive to one's com- 
i88 



Home Truths 189 

pauious. And then there is a whole range of 
faults of manner, roughnesses, rudenesses, con- 
tradictoriness, snapjiishness, domestic fault-find- 
ing conducted in public, personal preferences 
imposed upon guests — all the things which arise 
partly from want of observation, and partly from 
petty selfishness — things not very serious in them- 
selves, but the removal of which would add im- 
mensely to the pleasantness and ease of life in 
the particular circle involved; and then, again, 
there are things like snobbishness, inquisitiveness, 
un trustworthiness, violations of privacy, blabbing 
of secrets, ostentation, censoriousness, which may 
not afl'ect a man's virtue or honour, but which 
make other people uncomfortable or on their 
guard in his company. 

The question is whether it is a plain duty for 
a friend to represent the facts, and to testify to 
the offender on such points if the offender is a 
friend. It is often quite clear that a man is un- 
conscious of such faults. They have grown upon 
him in all probability from small beginnings; and 
if he is unsensitive and unobservant, he is pro- 
bably wholly unaware of the prominence which 
they have assumed. 

Now let me tell a simple story to illustrate 
what may happen in such a case. An acquaint- 
ance of mine developed a kind of curious grunt- 
ing noise, which he interjected into all his 
remarks, and with which he punctuated all 
silences. It became both ludicrous and offensive. 



iQo Along the Road 

His family circle debated the question, and it 
was at last decided that a near relative had better 
inform him of the fact. The relative did so. The 
offender was very mnch annoyed, volubly denied 
it, and added that he Avould desist from the prac- 
tice. He did so for a short period, and then took 
to it again as badly as ever. He was thus in 
the position of believing that he had cured himself 
of a trick, and he never quite forgave the relative 
for his interference. 

A friend of mine once developed a very in- 
genious scheme. He held that the need for people 
to be told of their faults was an urgent one, but 
that their friends could not be expected to do it. 
So he suggested that there should be a small 
Government department, with a staff of inspectors 
or Truth-tellers, to whom a report of the circum- 
stances could be referred. If the report was ade- 
quately backed, and the office considered the case 
a suitable one, after the payment of certain fees, a 
Truth-teller would be sent down to the offender, 
to inform him without bias or animus, in a purely, 
judicial, and if possible, judicious way, of the 
fault. This system, my friend affirmed, would 
do more for household peace than much social 
legislation. 

But, speaking seriously, the difficulty is great. 
Fortune sometimes sends one a direct oppor- 
tunity. A friend may consult one in such a way 
that one's course is clear. A friend of my own 
did once ask my advice about a painful situation 



Home Truths 191 

iu which he found himself, owing to his having 
given great offence to a relation of his own hj 
his remarks upon a private incident. He asked 
me to tell him quite frankly and candidly whether 
he was to blame. The fault was in this case a 
fault of manner, arising from a habit he had 
formed of expressing himself with an extravagant 
vehemence and intemperance of comment which 
was often quite out of proportion to the cause. 
T did tell him quite plainly what I believed to 
be wrong; he was not only grateful, but the in- 
cident served to confirm and strengthen our 
friendship, while he contrived quite successfully 
to combat the tendency. 

And then, occasionally, one is given an oppor- 
tunity of saying the necessary truth in a moment 
of anger, justifiable or unjustifiable. There was 
an eminent judge, who had got into the habit, 
after a game of whist, of commenting very irri- 
tably and offensively on his partner's play. 
" Don't you see that if you had played the queen 
you would have had them at your mercy? It is 
simply incredible to me that you could throw 
away all our chances — oh, the tricks we have 
lost ! " The man who effected the reformation was 
an unskilful player, and a quick-tempered person 
as well. At the conclusion of one of these tirades 
he said, '^ You seem to think. Sir, that you are 
still in your beastly old police-court!" 

It was said with straightforward anger, and it 
is hard to say that the anger was not justifiable; 



192 Along the Road 

and I must add that I believe it was entirely 
effectual. 

But this is, of course, a social matter. The 
thing is far harder when it is an ethical ques- 
tion. If one sees a man giving a wrong im- 
pression of himself, vitiating his own effectiveness, 
causing misunderstanding and ill-feeling, it does 
sometimes appear to be a duty for a friend to 
remonstrate. But one is obliged to look facts in 
the face, to remember that people are human, and 
that one must risk, if one does think it necessary 
to speak, not only a disagreeable interview, which 
it may be a duty to face, but what is a much 
more serious thing, losing a man's friendship and 
confidence. Of course, a man ought to regard a 
friend who has told him an unpleasant truth 
with increased affection and respect; but the 
flesh is weak, and it must be confessed that it 
is very hard to be at ease in the presence of a 
man who has unveiled to oneself a thoroughly 
disagreeable trait. 

x4nd thus the question resolves itself into this : 
Is one bound to risk losing a friendship for the 
sake of trying to effect a moral improvement in 
a friend? If one reads the Gospel, one finds 
there is a good deal about loving other people 
and supplying their needs, but there is very little 
indeed about the duty of finding fault or lec- 
turing them or improving them. There is a bless- 
ing on the pure-hearted and on the peacemaker, 
there is no beatitude for the reprover and for 



Home Truths 193 

the rebuker. In the parable of the Prodigal Son, 
the father is, of course, the hero of the story. It 
is a pity that the parable was ever called the 
Prodigal Son, because he is quite a subsidiary 
character, and his motives for repentance are 
frankly deplorable. But the father has not a 
word of blame for the sufferer: the poor wretch 
lias been punished enough, and the father leaves 
it there; he does not rub in the heavy lessons 
of experience, or even express a hope of seeing 
a real amendment. Without blame, without ques- 
tion, without exhortation, he takes the unhappy 
creature back to his heart, and bids the minstrels 
do their best to cheer the simple feast. The only 
person who expresses perfectly just and natural 
indignation is the elder brother, and even for him, 
ungracious and detestable as he is, the father has 
no word of blame. He only begs him to banish 
all thoughts except a natural and kindly joy. 
The secret of the parable is that by loving people 
through thick and thin, if one can, the real vic- 
tories are won; and that the only improvement, 
the only regeneration which is worth anything, 
comes that way. The fees of experience, as 
Stevenson says, are apt to be heavy — that can- 
not be avoided I If men will not hear Moses and 
the prophets, they will not listen even to one 
risen from the dead. Remorse and regret are the 
shadow of sin, but they have no healing power. 
The only restorative is to see the beauty and the 
happiness of unquestioning love ; even the casting 
13 



194 Along the Road 

out of evil is worse than useless, unless its place 
is supplied b}^ a stronger and a sweeter force. It 
ma}^ not be the creed of the Puritan, but it is 
the creed of Christ — that nothing must stand in 
the way of love. The only thing that called forth 
riirist's bitter denunciation was the unloving 
rigidity of the self-righteous; and there can be 
no sort of doubt that an absolutely uncritical 
and unquestioning love is a far higher and more 
heavenly thing than any enforcement of moral 
standards, however lofty, if they are not rooted 
in love. Nothing can be done by mere disap- 
proval; but the love that hopes and expects and 
believes that the thing, whatever it be, in each 
of us, that evolves love and is worthy of it will 
somehow triumph and prevail; that is what calls 
out effort and strength, and purifies while it 
uplifts, and because it uplifts. 



SUPERSTITION 

I REMEMBER oncG as a boY — it must have been in 
the Tear 1S70 — sitting on the seat of a diligence 
which was scrambling along a high road in Nor- 
mandy, through open agricultural country — wide 
fields and tree-embosomed farms, with here and 
there a clustered village of white houses. On the 
seat beside me sat Westcott, then a Cambridge 
Professor, who was taking his summer holiday 
with us, dressed in rough black, with an old soft 
wide-awake on his head, wrapfjed up in his in- 
variable grey plaid shawl, and with the accus- 
tomed sketch-book in his hand. He sat silent, 
rather hunched up, his mouth compressed, his 
l)]ows contracted, and with those wonderful ex- 
pressive eyes of his looking fixedly at the moving 
landscape. Every now and then he raised his 
hat as if in salute. I watched him for a long 
time, and then ventured to ask him why he took 
off his hat so often. He gave a characteristic 
little start, smiled very intently, and then blushed. 
Then he said, ^' It 's those magpies ! " The coun- 
try, indeed, seemed full of them; three or four 
at a time would rise balancing and poising, and 
then sail off to the shelter of the nearest holt, 

195 



196 Along the Road 

with loug tails jauntily extended. Westcott, after 
a silence, added, '" I got into a foolish habit, as 
a boy, of always raising my hat to a magpie, and 
I can't give it up. There 's another ! " and his 
hat went off again. 

I have often recalled that pleasant scene, and 
the ingenuous shame with which the Professor 
confessed to the little superstitious reverence, 
which he could not justify or give up. Indeed, 
I admit that I never see magpies myself without 
repeating the old rhyme: 

" One for sorrow, 

Two for mirth, 
Three for a death. 

Four for a birth; 
Five, you will shortly be 
In a great company." 

The last two lines have a delicious sort of mys- 
tery about them. But I allow that I would 
always rather see two or four magpies together 
than one or three. 

The odd thing about these little superstitions, 
and I suppose we have most of us got some two 
or three that we cherish, is that we regard, as 
a rule, the incidents which arouse them with a 
sense of momentary and even pleasurable excite- 
ment. It is very difficult to analyse the feeling. 
Do we regard the incidents as the cause of the 
disaster that is supposed to follow them, or 
merely as warnings of an impending misfortune 



Superstition 197 

which we are powerless to avert? Some few 
superstitions have their antidote. If one spills 
salt, one may set all straight by throwing a 
pinch of the offending substance with the right 
hand over the left shoulder. I always do it my- 
self ! It is supposed, I fancy, that one's good and 
evil angels are constantly in attendance — the good 
angel on one's right, and the evil angel on one's 
left; and that by throwing the salt, the spilling 
of which has put one momentarily in the power 
of the evil influence, with the right hand over the 
left shoulder, one flings it in the eyes of the evil 
spirit. But as a rule there is, in the case of 
most superstitions, nothing so practical to be 
done. One can only sit and shudder, after break- 
ing a mirror, or seeing the new moon through 
glass, till the impending stroke falls. Some 
superstitions, like walking under a ladder, I al- 
ways set deliberately at defiance; but I suppose 
that the origin of that is simply precautionary, 
that one may not be struck by falling tiles ? But 
no doubt the whole raison d'etre of those old fears 
is that they date from a time when men believed 
that the world swarmed with unseen malicious 
spirits, who took advantage of any lapse to set 
upon the offender. The odd thing is that the 
offences seem such trivial and harmless things I 
If it were the commission of some deliberate sin 
that gave evil its opportunity, it would be more 
intelligible; but the things which incur the hos- 
tility and invite the assaults of these uncanny 



198 Along the Road 

l)owers seem to be so fortuitously and grotesquely 
selected. 

Neither is it as if the only people who in- 
dulged in these superstitious fancies were anxious, 
weak-minded, and foolish persons. A strong vein 
of superstition is often found in connection with 
highly robust and reasonable temperaments. I 
have a near relation, one of the most healthy 
and sensible people in the world, who is the prey 
of many of these fancies. One winter evening 
he came into my room. I was writing by the 
light of three candles. He rushed at the table 
and carefully extinguished one. I remonstrated. 
'' Well, I don't mind if you will only have four" 
he said, '^ but three — that's most unlucky!" 

Another odd point is that the most superstitious 
people never think of investigating the subject 
carefully. If, whenever they violated one of their 
principles, they carefully noted down the results, 
whether disastrous or not, they could, one would 
think, either confirm or dispel the theory. But 
that they will not do. I pointed out once to a 
votary of the superstition about thirteen sitting 
down to a meal, that it was only a question of 
percentage, and that if it was true of thirteen, 
it must be still more true of fourteen or fifteen. 
She — it was a singularly lively and intelligent 
woman — said, "Oh! that is the tiresome habit 
you men have of rationalising! It is not true of 
fourteen, and I have proved it many times by 
asking in the Vicar to dine when I was threat- 



Superstition 199 

ened with a party of thirteen — and nothing has 
ever happened." 

Two of the most curious instances in history 
of the superstitious temperament are those of 
Archbishop Laud and Dr. Johnson. Every one 
remembers Laud's dreams, such as the one where 
all his teeth fell out except one, which he " had 
much ado to hold in its place with both hands," 
and how he prayed it might portend no evil. 
That is a good instance of confusing the cause 
and the sign. Either the dream caused the evil, 
in which case there was nothing to be done but 
to wait for the sequel; or else it was a kindly 
and a timely warning. But to pray that it might 
not portend evil shows a curious confusion of 
mind. Laud, too, was constantly on the lookout 
for warnings and prognostications in psalm and 
lesson ; all of which things show that in spite of 
his acti^ity and decisiveness and his disregard of 
others' feelings, he was of a nervous and anxious 
temperament. With Dr. Johnson the thing is not 
so strange, because underneath his robust hu- 
mour and his supreme common-sense there lay a 
dark vein of hypochondria. Who can forget his 
anxious care to go out of doors with his right 
foot first, his touching of posts, his murmured 
prayers and ejaculations? 

Of all the old superstitious stories, I think one 
of the most interesting is that told by Cicero, 
because it not only illustrates the habit of mind, 
but throws a curious sidelight upon the pro- 



200 Along the Road 

iiiiuciation of Latin. He was at Bruudisium, I 
think, about to start by sea for Greece. A vendor 
came along the quay, crying Caunean figs for 
sale. ^* Cauneas ! Cauneas ! " Of course, said 
Cicero, I decided at once not to go, and took 
measures accordingly. The fact is that Cauneas 
was the usual pronunciation — thus much is clear 
— of the Latin words. Cave ne eas (" Mind you 
don't go"). But the odd thing is that it does 
not seem to have occurred to Cicero to warn his 
fellow-passengers of the prognostication. He only 
considered it as a sign which he had been fortu- 
nate enough to be able to interpret. And this is 
very characteristic of the general attitude. Pro- 
vidence is regarded, not as a just dispenser of 
good and evil, but as powerless to avert a cata- 
strophe, and only able to intimate to a favoured 
few, by very inadequate means, the disasters in 
store; and it is this that makes the whole thing 
into rather a degrading business, because it seems 
to imply that there is a whimsical and malicious 
spirit behind it all, that loves to disappoint and 
upset, and to play men ugly and uncomfortable 
tricks, like Caliban in Setebos, 

" Loving not, hating not, just choosing so." 

I suppose that the spread of education tends 
to sweep all this away; but more of the old feel- 
ing probably lingers in out-of-the-way places and 
dark corners of the country than it is pleasant 



Superstition 201 

to admit. At Cerne Abbas, in Dorsetshire, there 
is a great figure, over 200 feet, I think, in length, 
traced in the turf of a chalk down, called the 
Man of Cerne. It represents a giant, holding 
in his hand a ragged club. It is of uncertain 
date, but it is certainly many years anterior to 
the Roman conquest of Britain. It is no doubt 
one of those figures of which Caesar speaks, upon 
which captives, bound with osiers, were burned 
alive, with horrible rites. The monks tried to 
consecrate the religious awe investing the figure 
by rechristening it St. Augustine, and explain- 
ing the club as the representation of a fish, to 
show that he had crossed the sea — though why 
one should therefore land with a large John Dory 
in one's hand is not so clear! But there is no 
doubt that very ugly and vile superstitions did 
attach to the figure, and that most barbarous 
rites were practised there till a comparatively 
recent date. And it is certain that in remote 
l>arts of the country a good deal of the old black 
art prevailed till very recent times — if, indeed, 
it is altogether dead. One hears very well- 
authenticated stories of wax figures stuck with 
pins being found hidden in uncanny places within 
the last few years. How is one to banish these 
dismal traditions? It is hard to run them to 
earth at all; and no amount of intelligent argu- 
ment will prevail over minds which have in- 
herited an instinctive belief in such practices 
from long generations of ancestors. 



202 Along the Road 

But among educated people the whole thing is 
on a different footing. They regard superstitious 
beliefs and practices with an outspoken amuse- 
ment, though there is also a vague sense in the 
background that there may be something in it 
after all, and that it is better to be on the safe 
side. My own feeling about such things is that 
the only rational motive for avoiding incidents, 
with which ill-omened consequences are connected, 
is that, if by some unhappy coincidence disasters 
do follow their occurrence, it is such a bad ex- 
ample for weak-minded people, whose belief in the 
inauspicious character of an event is far more 
surely confirmed by a single instance of disaster 
follow^ing it than by a hundred instances when 
no such disaster occurs. And yet by avoiding 
such incidents one seems tacitly to concur with 
those that ^' hold of superstitious vanities." 

But we have still a few things to learn, a few 
steps to climb, and we cannot be too much in 
a hurry. It is a fault with benevolent and sen- 
sible people, who see clearly what the truth is, 
to be impatient if other jjeople will not give u]) 
unreasonable ideas the moment that they are told 
what is true. It is the old contest between in- 
stinct and reason, and the victories are slow. 
But just as the wicked old baronial strongholds, 
which represented so much that was tyrannical 
and abominable, have now crumbled down into 
picturesque ruins, and make a goal for summer 
pilgrimages, so these old dark forces seem to be 



Superstition 203 

transforming themselves into nothing worse than 
pretty and silly observances, about which it is 
difficult to believe, so harmless and interesting 
have they become, that men were ever really 
swayed and moved b}^ them. There are such 
mysterious and terrible things in the world that 
it is easy enough to be bewildered ; but there can 
be no reason why we should add to the burden, 
and torment ourselves by causeless and imaginary 
fears, only to combat them by grotesque and 
meaningless ceremonies. 



LETTER-WRITING 

A HUNDRED years ago, I suppose that an Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury wrote possibly half a dozen 
letters a day, and perhaps not even every day. 
Nowadays, the correspondence of the Archbishop 
needs a staff of secretaries, and probably averages 
between forty and fifty letters a da}^ all the year 
round. The facility of communication has two 
sides to it, and as my father used to say, " The 
penny post is one of the ordinances of man that 
we have to submit to for the Lord's sake." The 
result of all this multiplication of correspondence, 
combined with the fact that people move about 
much more, hold more interviews, and see more 
of each other, is that the old leisurely sort of 
letter-writing has, to a great extent, gone out. 
One can see this from modern biographies. 
Letters tend more and more to be business com- 
munications, and to deal with definite points. 
In days when postage was expensive, and when 
there was less going and coming, a letter was 
a friendly interchange of thought and news, and 
covered much of the ground that is now covered 
by talk. When Dr. Balston was headmaster of 
204 



Letter- Writing 205 

Eton, he used to say that leave for boys to go 
home must only be granted if applied for by letter 
or personally, adding '^ A telegram is a hasty 
thing!" That is the characteristic which seems 
inseparable from modern civilisation — it is all a 
hasty thing. If one reads a book like Stanley's 
Life of Arnold, one realises how much more of 
himself a busy man like Arnold, with a great 
school on his hands and a big book on the stocks, 
contrived to put into his long and elaborate 
letters than a public man can afford to do now- 
adays. There may, of course, be leisurely people 
in secluded corners with a taste for expression, 
who are writing letters of the old humours and 
entertaining kind, with a literary flavour about 
them. But when one reads such letters as Lamb's 
or Byron's or FitzGerald's or Buskin's, one can- 
not help feeling that the art has been or is being, 
killed by the conditions of modern life. It is not 
that the taste for expression has gone out, but 
what is written is written as a rule for publica- 
tion; and there can be few people who do as 
J. A. Symonds used to do, when he wrote a letter 
of the elaborate kind — namely, copy it into a 
notebook with room for amplification and anno- 
tation ! There are, indeed, stories which prove 
what a trouble letter-writing is to busy men. 
There was a well-known dignitary of the Church 
whose unanswered letters used to accumulate in 
such numbers that he was supposed at intervals 
to fill a portmanteau with them and take it abroad 



2o6 Along the Road 

with him. Somehow or other the portmanteau 
disappeared. It was darkly hinted that he had 
been seen with his own episcopal hands to tip 
it over the bulwarks of a steamer into the sea, 
and that a notice used afterwards to appear in 
the papers that his lordship had unfortunately 
lost a bag containing letters, and would be glad 
if those of his correspondents who had received 
no reply would communicate with him again. 
" By which time," the great man would say, with 
a humorous smile, " most of the letters in question 
had answered themselves." 

I have myself very decided theories as to letter- 
writing and letter-answering. Somehow or other 
I contrive to have a very large correspondence. 
There are three or four institutions with which 
I am connected, which bring me a good many 
business communications. Then I have many 
letters from relations, friends, and old pupils; 
and, lastly, I receive a great many letters — it 
will hardly be credited how many — from unknown 
people all over the world about my books. The 
result of it all is that so large a part of every 
day is spent in writing letters, that it is the 
rarest thing in the world for me to find time to 
write a letter spontaneously. It is not that I 
dislike writing letters — rather the reverse; but it 
is so difficult in any one day to get to the bottom 
of the pile, that there simply is no opportunity 
to indulge in leisurely correspondence. I have a 
strong sense of conscience about answering letters 



Letter- Writing 207 

politely. Peril ai)s that is rather too dignified a 
term to use: but it is no more possible for me 
not to answer a civil letter than it would be 
possible for me, if a courteous stranger spoke to 
me in a hotel or a railway carriage, to turn my 
back and give no reply. The letters which reach 
me from unknown correspondents are decidedly 
interesting, kind, and often beautiful, sometimes 
extremely touching and pathetic; some writers 
tell me very curious things about themselves, and 
often give one a very surprising picture of life 
and thought; or they raise a point, or ask for 
an explanation. Then one receives controversial 
letters and severe letters; and occasionally very 
impertinent ones, though even these are often 
obviously dictated by a good motive. Another 
odd thing is the number of people who ask for 
copies of books. One would not write to a tailor 
or a shoemaker for a coat or a pair of boots, 
because one happened to like the style and 
appearance of their wares. But I suppose that 
I)eople think that an author is supplied with 
any number of copies of his books gratis, and 
is only too glad to get them into circulation! 
Then there are begging letters, and those I 
now generally harden my heart about and 
send no reply; for the simple reason that when 
I have investigated the circumstances, I have 
generally found that the case has not been 
fairly stated, that facts have been concealed, 
and that in more cases than one the writer 



2o8 Along the Road 

makes a professional income by his epistolary 
labours. 

Edward FitzGerald used to bold that every 
letter ought to be answered at exactly the same 
length as it was written, and reach down to the 
same place on the page. I do not at all feel that, 
and should be sorely puzzled to carry it out. 
There are long letters which need short answers, 
and short letters demanding long answers ; but I 
practically answer everything; and though I sup- 
pose one has a right not to do so, yet I should 
do it as a simple matter of courtesy, unless it 
took up too much time. 

The result, however, is that the letters w^hich 
one would most like to write — full and leisurely 
budgets to friends — get pushed into a corner. 
Sometimes I have been forced to call in a short- 
hand writer and dictate replies; but in that case, 
if the letters are at all private, I am careful to 
put in no names and leave out anything that 
could lead to identification, filling up the gaps 
afterwards. I have not personally any sense of 
privacy about letters. As far as I am concerned 
I should not mind any one reading any of the 
letters I receive or write. 

The test, I think, of a good letter is a very 
simj)le one. If one seems to hear the person 
talking as one reads the letter, it is a good letter. 
Of course a letter can be good for other reasons, 
because people's hands do not always work as 
fast as their brains. But if the letter gives one 



Letter- Writing 209 

a sense of the writer's personality, that is the 
first test. Some people, whose minds are active 
and whose conversation is pungent, write very 
uninteresting letters; and vice versa. Some of 
the most entertaining letters I ever read were 
from an old Scotch bailiff, who used to put the 
most delightful humorous touches into everything 
he wrote; but in talk he was shy and inarticulate. 
And there are some people who have the art of 
putting some characteristic touch into the briefest 
business note. 

As a rule, I think people write very readable 
hands, though elegant handwriting is gone out. 
But one of the oddest things is that many people 
who write legibly enough will put a most illegible 
scrawl for the address, and a still more un- 
decipherable hieroglyphic for the signature. T 
have been reduced to copying a name, stroke by 
stroke, on an envelope, and I have sometimes 
wished to cut a signature out and gum it on; 
but that has an air of discourtesy. There is one 
man, a secretary of an important institution, 
whose signature I have kept to show people. I 
have never known two people decipher it alike, 
and never any one at all who has come near to 
the correct interpretation. Again, one of the 
oddest facts is that I have more than once had 
letters from unknown women who have signed 
simply Christian name and surname; there has 
been nothing in the letter to indicate whether 
they were married or unmarried, and yet they 
14 



210 Along the Road 

have written to me to remonstrate with me for 
not addressing them correctly. But I am told 
that on the whole it is better to address such 
letters as Mrs. rather than as Miss. 

I know authors who make it a rule never to 
answer a letter from an unknown correspondent. 
But that seems to me inhuman. What can be 
more agreeable to an author, who writes for peo- 
ple in general, than to find that far-off readers 
have been interested, amused, or touched by what 
he has written? And my own experience has 
been that when I have been really moved by a 
book, and have felt it an act of simple gratitude 
to write to the author, known or unknown, I 
have always, or nearly always, received a kindly 
and frieudlj^ i'epl3\ In this mysterious and be- 
wildering world, where so much is dark and sad, 
it seems to me intolerable not to return a smile 
by a smile, a word by a word; not to grasp a 
kind hand held out, but to put one's own hands 
behind one's back. To call or to think such com- 
munications intrusive or impertinent seems to 
me to be like the man in the shipwreck who w^ould 
not accept a share in a floating spar proffered 
him by another passenger because he had not 
been formally introduced to him. Of course, if 
an author found that his work was being seri- 
ously hampered by having to answer letters of 
a trivial kind from innumerable correspondents, 
he could abstain from doing so, because he would 
rightly feel that he was doing his best to help 



Letter- Writing 21 1 

things along by his deliberate writings, and that 
his answer to inquirers lay there. Yet, even if 
I were in such a position, I should send a printed 
form of acknowledgment, unless such a course 
made serious inroads on my income. 

But I do not think that our Anglo-Saxon race 
is likely to err on the side of effusiveness. One 
may be fairly certain that if one hears from an 
unknown person, that person is for some reason 
or other in earnest. I suppose x>ossibly that a 
really famous or eminent author might be pestered 
by people who only desired to secure his auto- 
graphs. For I well recollect staying with a 
famous public man, and how one evening after 
dinner his secretary came in, said with a smile 
that the autographs had run out, and produced 
a packet of half-sheets of paper. The great man, 
with a tired smile and an apology, produced a 
stylograph and signed his name again and again. 
*' At the top of the paper, you observe," he said 
to me, " so that nothing can be written above it ; 
and then only when people send an addressed 
and stamped envelope." That sort of thing, T 
confess, bewilders me ; it seems to me to be human 
veneration reduced to its barest formula, its least 
common multiple. 

What I rather feel on the whole subject of 
letters is that we tend, by inherited instinct, I 
expect, to look upon letters as more important 
and more costly things than they really are. 
There are many people who practically never 



212; Along the Road 

write to old comrades and fiieiuLs, because they 
have a I'eeliug that if the}' write at all they must 
write at length. But that is a great mistake; 
and by this indolent reticence many good ties are 
broken. The point is the letter, not the length 
or literary quality of the letter. And it is pitiful 
to think that a few words scribbled on a scrap 
of paper three or four times in a year might 
save many a good friendship, which perishes list- 
lessly from lack of nutriment. 



VULGARITY 

I HAVE sometimes wondered whether there is, or 
ever has been, a man or a woman in the world 
who knew and recognised himself or herself to 
be vulgar. I snppose the truth is that, with a 
rather vague term like vulgar, every one's inner 
definition of the word is framed so as somehow 
to exclude himself. As a matter of fact, I doubt 
if anv but morbid people ever admit even to 
themselves that they can be frankly classified 
under some one evil designation. We do not 
mind confessing in a general way that we are 
sinners; but we prefer not to have our sins 
particularised by other people. A malicious man 
merely thinks that he is quick to detect the low 
and selfish motives by which most of his acquaint- 
ances are actuated. The rude person prides him- 
self upon his candour. The drunkard thinks that 
a certain amount of alcohol is agreeable to him 
and innocuous, and that he could always stop 
consuming it if he chose. But imagine the 
ignominious tragedy of the moment if a man in 
the solitude of his own room should smite his 
hand upon his forehead and say, *' I am a snob, 
213 



214 Along the Road 

a vulgar snob." Yet there is no doubt that most 
})eople would far more resent the epithet vulgar 
being unhesitatingly applied to them b}^ others 
than they would resent being labelled under 
decidedly graver moral offences. The code of 
honour, whatever its origin, is much more in- 
stinctive than the Christian code, and I fear there 
is no doubt that many men feel that the code of 
honour is their own affair, but that unpleasant 
moral failings are, to speak plainly, the affair of 
God. A man convicted of ^^ilgarity or of snob- 
bishness would not readily excuse himself on tlie 
ground that he was made so, though that con- 
solation is often self-applied to even grosser 
tendencies. 

The word vulgarity is, as I have said, a some- 
what difficult word to define, because it is applied 
on the one hand to a superficial set of qualities, 
matters of breeding and education, questions of 
demeanour and dress and pronunciation; and on 
the other hand, it covers some very grave and 
disagreeable faults indeed, which no one would 
with equanimity admit. In its ordinary sense 
the word is so much a question of comparison 
that no one would ever be likely to apply it to 
himself, because he would always have the com- 
fort of thinking that there were persons below 
him in the social scale, to whom the term would 
be more truly applicable. It is, for instance, 
commonly applied to things which are after all 
merelv matters of social ritual and observance. 



Vulgarity 215 

We ought, I suppose, in these democratic days, 
to write and speak as if there were no such things 
as social distinctions. One man is just as good 
as another — indeed, a shade better. But the word 
vulgarity is applied by a man with equal force 
both to people whom he sees to have more advan- 
tages than himself in the way of money and 
society, as well as to people whom he considers 
to have fewer advantages than himself. In the 
first case it means pretentious, and in the second 
it means common. I remember once being told 
by a lady who did a great deal of philanthropic 
work that the most curious etiquette prevailed 
in some of the houses she used to visit about 
behaviour at meals. At one house, in drinking 
tea, the spoon had to be put in the cup and 
held firmly against the side of it with the fore- 
finger, while the little finger had to be held out 
away from the cup with an air of graceful de- 
tachment. At another house, when you had drunk 
all the tea you cared to drink, you turned your 
cup upside down in the saucer. The two house- 
holds appeared to be of exactly the same social 
standing; but my friend found out that the spoon- 
holders considered the inversion of the cup to be 
vulgar, while the inverters thought spoon-holding 
to be pretentious. The odd thing is that one 
should be amused by this, and think both prac- 
tices alike absurd, when one is oneself just as 
exacting in the use of the knife. I should con- 
sider that it would be a sign of inferior breeding 



2i6 Along the Road 

for a man to shovel green peas into his mouth 
with a knife, however convenient; and I suppose 
that a man who naturally used his knife so would 
consider my prodding and dawdling with a fork 
under the same circumstances to be simply 
affectation. 

But the vulgarity, if it can be called vulgarity, 
which attaches to the ritual of social observance 
is a very superficial and harmless thing. It is 
merely, to employ ecclesiastical terms, a question 
of a different use, like the Sarum Use and the 
Bangor Use. It is just a symbol of a different 
tradition, and is practically indicative of nothing 
but wealth and social standing. 

But there is a ^'ulgarity which is a very dif- 
ferent affair, a rank and deep-seated quality of 
soul. This vulgarity is an ugly pretentiousness, 
an attempt to prove and assert superiority. Even 
here there are two kinds of pretentiousness. No 
one thinks a child vulgar if he has been tipped 
a half-sovereign, and goes about confiding the 
news of his astounding accession of fortune to 
every one in the house. And it may be unrefined, 
but it is not necessarily vulgar, when a man is 
so frankly delighted with his own good fortune, 
with his house, his wife, his man-servant and his 
maid-servant, his ox and his ass, that he cannot 
forbear speaking of such things in a good- 
humoured and joyful spirit, and showing them 
off to others. That may become very tiresome, 
because it is tiresome to be continually called 



Vulgarity 217 

upon to admire tilings, especially if you do not 
really admire them. But the mischief comes in 
if the possessor of these fine things is pleased 
with them not so much because he enjoys them, 
as because other people are not so fortunate. 
Some of the most innately vulgar people I have 
known have been people of irreproachable cour- 
tesy and demeanour; but one gradually perceives 
tliat their standard is all wrong, that they put 
the wrong values on people, that they do not 
like men and women because they are likeable 
or interesting, but because they are important. 
The man who keeps one kind of geniality for a 
countess and another for a farmer's wife is very 
liard to respect. There is no sort of reason why 
a man should migrate from one class to another. 
If he is born an earl, there is no harm in his 
consorting with earls; but he must not treat an 
offensive earl with courtesy, and an inoffensive 
farmer with discourtesy. There is a pleasant old 
story of a duke who got into a railway compart- 
ment occupied by another duke and a commercial 
traveller. He talked affably with both. When 
he got out, the commercial traveller, impressed 
by the respect with which the stranger was re- 
ceived at the station, inquired of one of the 
porters who he was, and on hearing the fact, 
said genially to the other duke, ^' Xow, that 's 
what I call a gentleman ! To think of his sitting 
here, hobnobbing with a couple of snobs like you 
and me." One only wishes that one could have 



2i8 Along the Road 

heard his further reflections when his other fel- 
low-traveller left him, and he discovered his 
identity as well. 

Vulgarity seems to lie not so much in a certain 
kind of action as in the motive that underlies 
the action : not so much in what you do and say, 
but in how you do it and say it. If you have 
a famous and distinguished relative, it is vulgar 
to tell stories about him, if your object is to 
glorify yourself; it is not in the least vulgar to 
tell stories about him if they are designed to be 
and are obviously interesting to your company. 
I have seen the thing done in both ways. May 
I tell a curious little adventure which happened 
to myself? Some years ago I sat next a stranger 
at a hotel table-d'hote, who paraded rather need- 
lessly his acquaintance with well-known ecclesi- 
astics. He made an erroneous statement about 
Lambeth, and appeared to be going on to criticise 
its recent occupants. I thought he might regret 
having committed himself, and demurred to his 
statement. He looked at me, and said rather 
impertinently, " May I ask if you know Lam- 
beth ? " ^' Yes," I said, " I lived there for a good 
many years." After which he treated me with 
much increased civility. It was this latter trait 
Avhich appears to me to have been vulgar, but 
it is quite possible that he considered me vulgar 
too for obtruding my experience. 

The worst of vulgarity is that it is so insidious 
a fault; and I fear it is true that the more apt 



Vulgarity 219 

one is to detect vulgarity in other peox)le, the 
more likely it is that one suffers from the fault 
oneself. The root of it is a false sense of dignity 
and a settled complacency. Sometimes, as T have 
said, that complacency is so strong and deep that 
the vulgarity of it all is difficult to detect, because 
the offender is so conscious of his superiority that 
he does not even think it worth while to assert 
it. There is a delightful old picture in Punch of 
two intensely feeble, brainless, and chinless peers, 
standing together at a reception in some big 
house. In the background, dimly outlined, looms 
the mighty form of Tennyson. One says to the 
other, " By the way, I hear that What 's-his-name, 
that poet feller, is going to become one of us." 
When complacency reaches this stage, it is on 
so colossal a scale as to be almost magnificent, 
though when Tennyson was made a peer there 
were, no doubt, a good many people who con- 
sidered it an honour bestowed on literature rather 
than an honour conferred upon the peerage. 

Like all secret faults, vulgarity is difficult to 
detect; but a man may suspect that he is in 
danger, if he finds himself inclined to compare 
himself favourably with other people, and if he 
is inclined to take credit to himself rather than 
to feel gratitude for any success he may have 
achieved. The fault may exist with high genius. 
It can hardly be denied that Byron was vulgar, 
and that Napoleon was vulgar. On the other 
hand, Nelson and Wordsworth, both of whom 



220 Along the Road 

were fully conscious of their high gifts, had not 
the least touch of it. They Avere proud, while 
Byron and Napoleon were vain; and vanity is 
almost certain to display itself in vulgarity. The 
essence of vulgarity is not so much to succeed as 
to wish to be known to succeed ; not to be better 
than others, but to wish to seem better than 
others; not to possess greatness, but to wish to 
be envied for your greatness. And it may be said 
that any man who cares more about his work 
than about himself cannot possibly be vulgar; 
while a man who cares about his work as giv- 
ing a pedestal for his own statue is almost 
inevitably so. 



SINCERITY 

Sincerity is one of the virtues which we all 
admire when we see it, but which is very hard 
to practise deliberately, for the simple reason 
that it disappears, like humility, the moment 
that it becomes self-conscious. Uriah Heep, in 
David Copperfieldy was for ever asserting his 
humility; but as soon as a man becomes proud 
of being so humble, he is humble no longer. 
Similarly, the man who is preoccupied with his 
own sincerity, is well on his way to become in- 
sincere, because his sincerity has become a pose. 
The essence of sincerity is simplicity, and sim- 
plicity conscious of itself is one of the most com- 
plicated things in the world. The old definition 
of sincere used to be sine cera, " without wax," 
and it was supposed to be a metaphor from honey 
strained off pure and translucent from the comb. 
A pretty, though wholly fanciful, etymology; but 
the idea is a true one — the rich, authentic, crys- 
talline, fragrant substance of the soul, without 
any cloudy or clogging intermixture; it would 
be simple enough if all souls were like that! 
But the difficulty for most of us is that we are 

221 



222 Along the Road 

painfully conscious of a duality, even a multi- 
plicity, of elements, a sad jumble of qualities, 
even of opposite qualities, stored in our sjnrits, 
like the contents of some ancient lumber-room. 
What is the practical issue of it all? If we want 
to be sincere — and it is a quality that we all 
admire and most of us desire — does it mean that 
we are to exhibit all our wares? If we are irri- 
table, mean, jealous, selfish, is it sincere to parade 
these things, or at all events to make no effort 
to conceal them? Are we bound to say, like the 
^Taster of Ballantrae, in words which contain 
perhaps the sincerest confession of self ever put 
in the mouth of a character in fiction, " I am 
a pretty bad fellow at bottom "? Is it hypocrisy 
to attempt to liide our faults? Sometimes that 
is the most effectual way of getting rid of them. 
It would be absurd to say that if a man felt 
irritable, he was hypocritical if he did not show 
it, or that if he was conscious of being of a 
jealous disposition, he was bound to approve and 
applaud instances of jealous behaviour in other 
people, for the sake of being consistent. The 
curious thing about English people is that they 
tend, if anything, to be hypocritical about their 
virtues rather than about their faults. I know 
several people who are ashamed of appearing to 
be as generous and as tender-hearted as they 
really are. We are naturally an emotional and 
a sentimental nation, and we are desperately 
afraid of betraying it. We like sentimental 



Sincerity 223 

books and plays and sermons, but we are very 
hard on sentimental talk. We like things that 
make us cry, better than things that make us 
lajigh. John Bull, for all his top-boots and his 
ample waistcoat, is a very tender-hearted old 
fellow, and heartily dislikes to be thought so. 
We despise other nations for their courtesy and 
excitability, and think their display of emotion 
generally to be ridiculous and affected. Yet we 
ourselves are the victims of a deep-seated habit 
of posing. We pretend to be bluff and gruff, when 
we are really only shy and amiable. I had an 
old friend once who carried this to an almost 
grotesque degree. He was a friendly, rather soft- 
hearted man, but he got it into his head, early 
in life, that it was manly to be rough; he stamped 
about the house in enormous boots, and spoke 
what he called his mind on all occasions, though 
in reality he was only saying the sort of things 
that he imagined were appropriate to a man of 
the type that he had adopted. I went with him 
once to call on a distinguished lady. He was 
horribly shy, and showed it by sitting down on 
a chair the reverse way, holding the back between 
his knees, and agitating it to and fro as if he 
were riding a rocking-horse, while he criticised 
the luxury of the upper classes in a highly offen- 
sive way. He desired to give the impression of 
being totally unembarrassed, but wholly in vain, 
because his behaviour was merely supposed to 
be the result of an almost frenzied nervousness; 



224 Along the Road 

and, after all, it is not moral cowardice to be 
decorously respectful at the right time and place. 

That is really the worst of the situation, that 
we do, in England, too often confuse roughness 
with sincerity, and offensiveness with candour; 
while in reality the essence of sincerity is that 
we should mean what we say, not that we should 
say all that we think. There is a story of Tenny- 
son standing by the tea-table, while his wife and 
a distinguished authoress were exchanging some 
meaningless but harmless compliments, and gaz- 
ing down upon them in silence, till a pause 
occurred, when he said in his most portentous 
tones, " What liars you women are ! " That was 
not sincerity, but something like brutality; for 
after all it is no more insincere to conceal your 
thoughts than it is insincere to wear clothes. 

We tend to limit the application of the word 
insincere almost wholly to matters of conversa- 
tion, and curiously enough we limit it further 
almost entirely to the people who say pleasant 
and agreeable things. If a man tells an un- 
X)leasant truth, we say that he is frank; if he 
tells a pleasant truth, we say that he flatters. 
The best combination of urbanity and directness 
I know was afforded by an old friend of mine 
who took a lady in to dinner, and asked her many 
questions about herself and her relations in a 
way which showed he was intimately acquainted 
with her performances and family traditions. She 
said at last smilingly, *^ Well, it is a pleasant 



Sincerity 225 

surprise to find oneself so famous I How did you 

know all this, Mr. ? ■' An insincere man 

Avould have bowed, and murmured that some 
l)eoi)le were public property, and so forth. But 
my friend, with a twinkle in his eye, replied, " I 
asked." 

No one would, however, consider it to be in- 
sincere not to talk about anything which hap- 
I>ened to be in his mind at the time. The difficulty 
rather is with people of genial and sympathetic 
temperament, who are apt in the excitement of 
the moment to say more than they mean, and to 
seem to undertake more than they can carry out. 
There are some people to whom it is absolutely 
natural to wish instinctively to stand well with 
the people in T^hose company they find themselves, 
and whose egotism takes the form not of talking 
about themselves, but of desiring themselves to 
be felt and appreciated, and to establish a per- 
sonal relation with the particular people they 
happen to be thrown with. Some people at first 
sight seem to be extremely sympathetic, and the 
interest they feel may be temporary, but it is 
often at the moment quite genuine. The disap- 
pointment comes afterwards, when one finds that 
they have forgotten all about one, and make no 
attempt to follow up the relations which seemed 
to be happily established. Personally, I am glad 
of civility and interest and sympathy on any 
terms, and I do not claim an indefinite continu- 
ance of such favours. One should take exactly 

IS 



226 Along the Road 

what people are prepared to give, and not demand 
more. But it is a difficult matter to know what 
people who suffer from a plenitude of superficial 
S3^mpathy ought to do. It is difficult to advise 
them to cultivate an indifferent and unsym- 
pathetic attitude. They must, however, expect 
to have to pay for the pleasure they both give 
and receive; they must be prepared to meet 
further claims, and to be criticised as insincere 
if they cannot meet them. " Too sweet to be 
wholesome," as an old Scotch keeper said to 
me of a lady whose adjectives outran her emo- 
tions. Yet the sincerity or the insincerity of 
such behaviour does greatly depend upon the 
motive that lies behind it. If there is in reserve 
a genuine good-will, and a sincere instinct for 
desiring to see and to make others happy, the 
unfavourable criticism is rarely made. I know 
more than one public man who has the blessed 
knack of making the most insignificant person 
in his company feel that he is the object of his 
sincere and active benevolence; and such persons 
are no more blamed for not prolonging their 
attentions in absence, than the sun is blamed for 
not shining at the bottom of a coal-pit. One feels 
that the sun is in his place, and can be depended 
upon to shine at the right season and under the 
right conditions. But the people who do get 
labelled insincere are those whose aim is not the 
happiness of other people, but their own comfort ; 
who are sympathetic because they want to give 



Sincerity 227 

an impression of sympathy and kindness for their 
own satisfaction. And these are the liardest of 
all to enlighten, because they do not recognise that 
there is anything amiss, or perceive that their 
action is based on selfishness; and even if they 
do realise it, it is very hard for them to act other- 
wise, because one becomes unselfish through im- 
pulse and not through argument. One can cure 
oneself of a fault by discipline, but no amount of 
discipline will create a generous virtue. 

Sometimes the world is startled by the revela- 
tion of the private wrong-doing of men of great 
outward respectability; of course if that wrong- 
doing is deliberate, and the outward pretence of 
virtue a mere mask donned for convenience, there 
is nothing to be said; that is the hypocrisy of 
the Pharisees. But a man who yields to evil from 
weakness does not necessarily desire to sin, and 
still less does he wish others to do so; a man 
who does wrong may be most sincerely on the 
side of the right, and even more intensely than 
othei's, if, as may well be the case, he realises 
the misery of his sin. Sincerity does not neces- 
sitate that every one should make public con- 
fession of everything, or that no one should ever 
dare to recommend a virtue which he cannot 
always practise. If we all lowered our pro- 
claimed standard to the level of our private prac- 
tice, we should merely countenance and encourage 
evil. Of course the truest sincerity is to amend 
our faults, and not to preach anything which we 



228 Along the Road 

do not honestly try to practise. And even in 
the worst cases of all, it is in itself a comfort 
to recognise that, as an old writer says, hypocrisy 
is, after all, the homage paid by vice to virtue. 

What really makes all the difference is a deep- 
seated and conscious singleness of aim. A man 
may have many and patent faults. He may act 
inconsistently and even unworthily on occasions, 
and yet may be perfectly sincere, if he is not 
trying to fight on both sides in the battle. Fail- 
ure matters little; it is the intention that shines 
through. The man who cannot be sincere is the 
man who gets all the pleasure that he safely can 
out of evil, and professes a belief in what is good, 
for the sake of the convenience it brings him. 

And therefore, as I say, sincerity is a virtue 
that can hardly be directly cultivated. It is 
rather like a flower which follows naturally and 
in due course, if the right seed be sown. 



EESOLUTIONS 

In the year 1781, when he had somewhat more 
than three years of life remaining to him, Dr. 
Johnson wrote in one of his little memorandum 
books : 

August 9, 3 P.M., setat. 72, in the summer-house at 
Streatham. 

After innumerable resolutions formed and neglected, 
I have retired hither to plan a life of greater diligence, 
in hope that I may yet be useful, and be daily better 
prepared to appear before my Creator and my Judge, 
from whose infinite mercy I humbly call for assistance 
and support. 

My purpose is to pass eight hours of every day in 
some serious employment. 

Having prayed, I purpose to employ the next six 
weeks upon the Italian language for my settled study. 

There is something, I always feel, very gallant 
and adventurous about this. The old lion was 
near his end ; he was suffering from a painful 
complication of disorders; the thought of death 
was, as it always had been, a grievous and over- 
shadowing dread to him; and yet here is the old 
man on his knees, planning a new and practical 
229 



230 Along the Road 

scheme of life, including eight hours a da}' of 
serious employment and six weeks devoted to the 
study of Italian ! There is no evidence that the 
scheme was ever carried out; he wrote nothing 
after this date except a refutation of the authen- 
ticity of the Ossianic poems ; and there is no reason 
to think that he applied himself to Dante; indeed, 
an extreme dislike of all regular employment had 
been from the earliest days one of Johnson's most 
besetting infirmities ; yet there is something splen- 
did in the hopefulness, the candour, the humility 
of the whole entry. No one ever made and broke 
so many vows as Dr. Johnson, and yet it never 
occurs to one to doubt his rugged sincerity, his 
fervent aspirations after perfection. No one ever 
abased himself so profoundly before God, or 
lamented his faults so vehemently, or judged his 
own performances so severely ; and yet there was 
nothing sentimental about his piety; he neither 
cringed nor crawled before his fellow-men ; he 
had no washy tolerance for the faults and foibles 
of others ; he did not spare his fellows ; he argued 
just as vehemently, he silenced his opponents just 
as peremptorily^, he laid down the law just as 
overbearingly, as if he had never known what it 
was to be penitent and contrite. How different 
from the piety of poor Coleridge, snivelling over 
his cup of cold tea at Highgate, and crying out 
lamentably, " But it is better than I deserve " ! 
The point is to take your punishment like a man 
when it comes, and not to whine about it. If 



Resolutions 231 

you glory in it, you make the punishmeut 
palatable by increasing your consciousness of 
meekness and patience. Who does not remember 
the self-righteous old servant in The Master of 
BaUantrae, who took to his bed and bore himself 
like an afflicted saint? "But the root of his 
malady, in my poor thought," says the shrewd 
Mackellar, " was drink." 

Yet on the other hand, there is something to 
be urged against ceaseless privately conducted 
scrutiny into one's own conduct. Half the danger 
of pet faults is that they are so ingeniously 
screened from their owner. There are many 
faults which are the seamy side of virtues; the 
ill-tempered man seems to himself to be bluff and 
outspoken, the tactless man to be frank and can- 
did, the mean man to be strenuously economical, 
the poor-spirited man to be patient and unworldly. 
I have never derived so much benefit from intro- 
spection as I have derived from the unconsidered 
utterance of a blunt friend or an offensive enemy ; 
and a secret process, where one is judge and jury 
and advocate and prisoner and executioner all at 
once, generally results in a plea of justification 
or extenuating circumstances. 

It may fairly be maintained that much making 
of little resolutions, with the inevitable sequel of 
much breaking of them, is neither a very fruitful 
nor a very wholesome process. It is not very 
wholesome, because it implies a good deal of 
raking in the rubbish-heaps of the soul ; and there 



232 Along the Road 

is a good deal to be said for the old mystical doc- 
trine called Transcension, which iiieaus nothing 
more than a very practical abbreviation of the 
period of repentance. The idea is that prolonged 
and wilful self-abasement is not a very inspirit- 
ing process, and that one's moral failures are 
best interred as speedily as possible. Dr. John- 
son was, in fact, a very prompt and sane Tran- 
scensionist, though he would no doubt have re- 
volted from it if he had known its technical and 
scholastic name. Again, the process of resolu- 
tion-making and resolution-breaking is not, as I 
have said, a very fruitful one; it is weakening 
to the fibre of the soul to be for ever taking 
pledges which one has o\\\j a very feeble hope 
of fulfilling. The practice is somewhat stuffy; 
it wants ventilation; it needs a little crude pub- 
licity. One is not likely to be very much ashamed 
of not keeping a promise made to oneself, which 
one only feels it would be convenient, if possible, 
to perform. As a common-sense friend once said 
to me, talking about the whole subject : " No, 
I don't make resolutions; if I think I am capable 
of doing wluit I want to do, I don't need a 
resolution; if I think I am incapable of carry- 
ing out an intention, it only makes things worse 
if I take a resolution without expecting to keep 
it." 

In fact, I am disposed to think that if a matter 
is serious enough, and if one is conscious enough 
of weakness to distrust one's own powers of self- 



Resolutions 233 

reformation, the only thing to do is to take some 
wise and kindly person into confidence, and to 
pledge oneself to state, at some fixed future date, 
how things have been going. That can be a real 
assistance, because it introduces the external ele- 
ment which well-intentioned but weak-minded 
people stand in need of. And, in any case, the 
thing ought to be done solemnly and seriously, 
and not too often. It is undoubtedly a wise 
thing to do to take stock, so to speak, at inter- 
vals. One cannot cure a fault in a week or de- 
velop a virtue in a month. But if one surveys 
a considerable period, it is possible to see whether 
one has advanced or retreated. 

But, like all personal things, it is largely a 
matter of temperament. If the making of resolu- 
tions is a practice that helps people, there is no 
conceivable reason why they should not have re- 
course to it. Even then, the danger is of trying 
to make progress in details, of making a fussy 
and a petty business of the whole thing, instead 
of advancing on large lines. I have often mis- 
trusted the old proverb about looking after the 
I)ence, and letting the pounds take care of them- 
selves. That generally seems to me to result in 
great discomfort and little accumulation. Much 
more substantial fortunes are made by looking 
after the pounds, and not fretting over the pence. 

The thing is to have a line of one's own ; to 
be sensible, hopeful, and courageous, rather than 
to be in a perpetual condition of scrupulous self- 



234 Along the Road 

accusalion and morbid discouragement; and to 
remember that, if it is indeed true that hell i.s 
paved with good resolutions, it is no less true 
that heaven is roofed with them! 



BIOGRAPHY 

Tt is a very interesting question as to how 
biographies ought to be written, and what are, 
or ought to be, the precise limits of discretion 
and indiscretion permitted to a biographer. The 
primary difficulty is this: It is easy to tell 
nothing but the truth about a man, and yet to 
give a thoroughly erroneous idea of him. Yet if 
a biography is written soon after the death of 
its subject, it may be impossible, with due regard 
for the feelings of survivors and relatives, to tell 
the whole truth. On the other hand, it is prac- 
tically inevitable that a biography should be 
issued soon after a man's death. If it is deferred, 
it may be deferred for ever. In these days, when 
rapidity is a notable characteristic of the age, our 
memories are short. The kaleidoscope shifts fast, 
and the personality of to-day becomes a shadowy 
memory to-morrow. What, then, is a biographer 
to do? Is he to submit his biography to every 
one who has the least right to be consulted? 
And if so, is he bound to defer to the preferences 
and prejudices of those whom he consults? And 
then there comes in a further difficulty. In the 

235 



236 Along the Road 

life of men who have played a considerable part 
in the world, there are sure to be episodes and 
controversies which have a considerable tempo- 
rary interest, but the interest of which is bound 
to expire before very long. To what extent is 
the biographer bound to devote large tracts of 
his book to these affairs? It is certain that there 
will be a good many people who will expect such 
episodes to be treated fully, and will pronounce 
the book to be incomplete unless a good deal of 
space is thus occupied. But the result of this 
upon the general reader — the man who is more 
interested in the personality than in the detailed 
work of the hero — will be that the book will con- 
vey an impression of heaviness and dulness. Are 
these technicalities to be introduced for the sake 
of technical students, or are they to be merely 
summarised and popularised for the sake of the 
general reader? These and similar difficulties 
have all to be faced by the biographer. 

The worst of the position is that the people 
who have what is called a right to object, do 
not, as a rule, object to the right things. There 
are a good many picturesque incidents and ad- 
ventures which may happen to a man, which are 
not really material to his biography. They may 
be interesting enough, but often the interest they 
possess is not derived from the illustration they 
afford of the personality of the hero, but because 
they cast light upon some other interesting per- 
sonage. These can be safely and fairly omitted. 



Biography 237 

But the points which the relatives of a man often 
object to are picturesque, humorous, vivid details, 
which they think display him in an undignified, 
impatient, vehement, or inconsiderate light. Peo- 
ple are ai)t to lose all sense of humour in the 
l^resence of death; and the unfortunate thing is 
that the more vivid and impetuous a man is, 
the more of these incidents are likely to be on 
record. The result of such a biography, where 
too much deference is paid to the wishes of rela- 
tives, is that there is what Jowett described as 
a strong smell of something left out. One gets 
a stately, dignified, statuesque, saintly kind of 
portrait, which is to intimate friends nothing 
more than a sickening caricature, and bears as 
much resemblance to the true man as his features 
viewed in a spoon. 

I suppose it may be admitted that Boswell's 
Johnson is probably the best biography ever 
written. But here there were some very marked 
advantages which simplified the situation. John- 
son was a childless widower, and had no very 
close circle of relatives to be deferred to. More- 
over, though there were plenty of incidents and 
occasions on which Johnson displayed neither 
the courtesy of a gentleman nor the forbearance 
of a Christian, yet there were far more numerous 
instances of noble generosity, splendid courage, 
and fervent piety. The result of Boswell's book 
is that we get the very heart and mind of a great 
man; and therefore it may be fairly said that if 



238 Along the Road 

a biography is meant to interest posterity, a con- 
siderable degree of wliat is called indiscretion is 
not only permissible but necessary; and more 
than that. The enormous merit of Boswell as a 
biographer is that he knew that many of the 
things that are usually dismissed as trivial are 
really the things in which the human mind is 
most deeply interested. There is a story told 
somewhere, of certain elderly ladies who enjoyed 
reading biography. Their method was a simple 
one. When they saw befoi'e them such words as 
" policy " or ^^ progress " they hastily turned the 
page; when they encountered such words as 
" smallpox " or " pony " they devoured every syl- 
lable. The biographer must keep this fact in 
view, or, rather, he must have an instinctive 
knowledge of what interests himself, rather than 
a theory of what ought to interest the well- 
regulated mind — a type of mind which is in 
reality as uncommon as it is intolerable. 

Let me take a few instances of recent bio- 
graphies, and indicate the qualities by which 
they succeeded or the reverse. The Life of Lord 
Macaulay, by Sir George Trevelyan, is one of the 
best Lives of the last century. It is neither too 
technical nor too minute. But then Macaulay 
was a very amiable man, and a decidedly pic- 
turesque figure, thoroughly human and pleasantly 
gay, so that there was little possibility of offence, 
and infinite scope for a truthful biographer. 

The Life of Tennyson, by the present Lord 



Biography 239 

TeniiYson, is a collection of extremely interesting 
and vivid material. Tennyson had the quality of 
personal impressiveness. As the life of a poet, 
it is' admirable. But there was another side, 
which kept Tennyson, in spite of his genius, in- 
tensely human : he had no petty qualities, except 
perhaps his vanity, but he had unrestrained, 
homely, frank, full-blooded moods — perhaps but 
rarely displayed to his son — the absence of which 
in the biography renders the picture incomplete. 
He could never have been anything but dignified, 
but his dignity was not quite on such pure and 
equable lines as the book conveys the impression 
of, and it was perhaps a larger and a finer thing, 
because of the very conflict which the book hardly 
reveals. 

The Lives of Morris and Burne-Jones, by Pro- 
fessor Mackail and Lady Burne-Jones respec- 
tively, are both beautiful and admirable books, 
because they reveal so much of the inner spirit 
of the two men. In form, I think that the Life 
of WiUiarn Morris has been rarely surpassed. Its 
proportion is exquisite, and the tale is told with 
a masterly unity and an equable progress. The 
Life of Burne-Jones is notable for a charming 
simplicity and naivete of presentment, whicli 
seems to bring one into direct touch with the 
artist himself. Yet I have heard each Life criti- 
cised by intimate friends of the two men. I have 
heard it said that a certain hardness of character, 
an unsympathetic self -absorption in his own work, 



240 Along the Road 

which characterised ^forris, was not siifificiently 
indicated; and that iu Burne-Jones there was a 
certain freakishness of disposition, a petulance 
of spirit, of which the book gives little idea. I 
am not in a position to estimate the truth of these 
criticisms. But it is certain that a man of in- 
tense energy and will-power, such as Morris pos- 
sessed, cannot pursue a very definite line of work 
without collisions with dissimilar natures; while 
a nature like Burne-Jones's is liable to reactions 
of weariness and depression, which are bound to 
play a part in his life. 

In a biography of a different kind, the Life of 
Lord Randolph ChurchUl, it seems to me that the 
balance is very judiciously and faithfully pre- 
served. Mr. Winston Churchill there exhibited 
the rare gift of never allowing his critical sense 
to be overpowered by filial admiration and sym- 
pathy. He contrives to be amazingly dispassion- 
ate and impersonal. The result is that the book 
displays to the full the strength and the gener- 
osity of its subject, while it clearly reveals the 
impulsiveness of temperament which was fatal to 
stability and sturdiness of character and career. 
The book is candid, vivid, and just, and holds a 
high place among contemporai'y biographies. 

One other book I would here mention, because 
of all recent biographical studies it is almost 
supreme in psychological interest. Fa flier and 
aS'ow was hailed by many readers, apart from its 
exquisite literary skill, as a record of extraor- 



Biography 241 

dinary subtlety, pathos, and humour; and what 
was felt by such readers to be its consummate 
beauty was that the biographer never either ex- 
alted or spared himself in tracing the lineaments 
of a character in many respects so alien to his 
own; and thus it appeared to be an almost tri- 
umphant combination of critical observation and 
tender devotion. Yet, on the other hand, there 
were critics who held it to be a violation of 
domestic piety and filial duty! We cannot dis- 
regard such criticism as being merely reactionary 
and stupid ; it has, no doubt, a wholesome element, 
and as long as humanity exists there must always 
be a conflict between reverence and candour, 
between emotion and art. 

The difficulty, then, is ultimately insoluble. 
On the one hand, if a biographer is not intimate 
with his subject he cannot give a lifelike por- 
trait; if he is intimate, he may hesitate to be 
frank, or if he is frank, he will be accused of 
impiety. And, again, we suffer under the defects 
of our quality; for English writers have been 
pre-eminent for the seriousness with which they 
have treated moral ideas in art. There is thus 
a tendency on the part of the public to demand 
that a book must be edifying; and so a com- 
promise seems almost essential. If the lives of 
all great men were invariably edifying, there 
would be no difficulty — yet no one has ever ac- 
cused St. Augustine of being indiscreet! The 
only rule would seem to be that the biographer 
16 



242 Along the Road 

must not suppress or omit essential features of 
life and character; and that he must trust to 
the whole effect being ultimately inspiring and 
edifying. The real weakness of the idealising 
biographer is this : that we are most of us frail ; 
and that it encourages us far more, in reading 
the lives of great men, to see them regretting 
their failures, fighting against their temptations, 
triumphing over their unworthy qualities, than 
to read the life of a man which seems to be merely 
an equable progress from strength to strength, 
a prosperous voyage over serene seas to a haven 
of repose and glory. 



GOSSIP 

It was said of Queen Victoria by one who knew 
her well that the conversation she liked best was 
conversation that was personal without being 
gossipy. That is only another of the many in- 
stances in which the Queen in matters of prac- 
tical conduct instinctively drew the line in the 
exact place, and made the right distinction. To 
be able to do this is only possible to people who 
possess a supreme combination of fine feeling and 
perfect common-sense. It is extremely difficult to 
lay down principles in the matter of conversation, 
or to regulate the use and abuse of what is cur- 
rently called gossip. It is not a question simply 
of what one listens to, and what one says, but 
whom one listens to, and to whom one talks. To 
lay down a general rule that one ought not to 
discuss other people is to be a preposterous prig. 
If human beings are not to be interested in each 
other's acts and words, and are not to discuss 
them, it is very hard to say what they may dis- 
cuss. It is equally unreasonable to say that one 
ought not to discuss one's friends behind their 
back, or that one ought not to say anything 

243 



244 Along the Road 

about an acquaiataiice that one is not prepared 
to say before him, because it is not by any means 
always good for people to know the truth about 
themselves, whether it be palatable or unpala- 
table. The difficulty about the whole question is 
that we all of us do and say things that we ought 
not to do or say, of which we are or ought to be 
ashamed, and which we do not wish to be in- 
cluded in the impression which we should like 
others to form of us. Another practical diffi- 
culty is that there are many things which may 
fairly be said, which may not fairly be repeated, 
and that some listeners are naturally leaky. 
They may hear a thing in confidence, and even 
if they are not seized with a burning desire to 
l)roclaim it, because every one likes to astonish 
and surprise and interest others, they soon 
forget that it was confidential, and impart it as 
naturally as they impart all they know. 

We most of us lead an exterior life which is 
public property, and which any one may legiti- 
mately discuss, and an interior life which we 
share with our circle of intimates. But it is not 
fair to say that we have no right to make public 
what we learn through intimacy. There are 
many people who make a less agreeable impres- 
sion on the world than they do on their friends, 
and if the friends are not to endeavour to correct 
and Improve that impression, their friendship is 
not worth much. Again, to say, as I have heard 
worthy people say, that one ought only to speak 



Gossip 245 



well of others, makes both for cluliiess and in- 
sincerity. Sometimes it is a plain duty, if one 
knows evil of a man, to warn an inexperienced 
person who may be drifting into intimacy with 
him; and apart from that, we all of us have 
faults and foibles, not of a serious kind, which 
ma}^ be fairly and not even uncharitably discussed 
by friends and foes alike. It is perhaps fair to 
postulate that we must not say, either maliciously 
or thoughtlessly, things, however true, w^hich tend 
to make a person more odious or more ridiculous 
than he need be. But it is not human to main- 
tain that if a notoriously vain or rude person is 
mentioned, no one is under any consideration to 
mention salient instances of his vanity or rude- 
ness. What a kindly person instinctively does is 
to mention at the same time instances of the more 
agreeable traits of such characters, which may 
tend to escape observation. The one thing that 
is really unpardonable is to tell a person who 
has been the subject of discussion what his critics 
or foes have said about him. It is, of course, 
conceivable that such a thing may be done from 
good motives, or at all events a tale-bearer pro- 
babh' as a rule deceives himself into thinking 
that his motives are good. But heaven guard us 
from such motives ! I have known the thing done 
often enough, and I have never known it to do 
anything but cause pain and suspicion and morti- 
fication. Personally, I do not care in the least 
what anyone, friend or foe, says of me behind 



246 Along the Road 

my back, as long as I am not told of their critic- 
isms. I am quite aware of my faults, and 
anxious to get rid of tliem. To know that they 
are discussed b}' others is only humiliating; to 
believe that they are not observed, or charitably 
viewed by others, encourages me to try to do 
better. There are, of course, people in the world 
whose temperament seems to have turned sour. 
It is not wholly their fault. Sometimes ill-health 
is the cause, sometimes dull and petty surround- 
ings, sometimes a lack of close human relation- 
ships, or an absence of normal activities. In such 
hands as these, gossip undoubtedly becomes a 
corroding and malignant process. I sat the other 
day in a hotel close to a party of three elderly 
ladies, sisters, I thought, who were travelling, it 
seemed, in search of material for conversation. 
But on the particular evening in question they 
were indulging in a species of anatomical demon- 
stration. They laid friend after absent friend 
upon the block and dissected each mercilessly 
and minutely. It was rather a terrible display 
of human nature, and, like the poet, I looked at 
the ladies " and did not wish them mine." 

But when all is said, the thing must be a 
matter of instinct and grace rather than of prin- 
ciple and effort. A good-humoured and tolerant 
man may say things without a suspicion of offence 
which in the hands of a malicious and unkindly 
person would seem like a shower of mud; gossip 
is, after all, but the natural outcome of interest 



Gossip 247 



in other human beings; and it is better that we 
should be interested in each other, even at the 
expense of some sharpness of criticism. There is 
a tine apophthegm which sums up the whole 
matter — and in passing may I say that I wish 
I could discover the source of the quotation? 

" There 's so much good in the worst of us, 
There 's so much bad in the best of us, 
That it ill beseems any one of us 
To find much fault with the rest of us." 

That is large-minded enough for anything — a 
finer maxim than the deliciously cynical remark 
made by one of the characters in Mr. Mallock's 
^ew Republic J who justifies scandal on the ground 
that it is a thing based on one of the most sacred 
of qualities — truth, and built up by one of the 
most beautiful of qualities — imagination. 



TACTFULNESS 

Tt was only a conversation, and we came to no 
conclnsion, like the talkers in Plato's dialogues. 
The subject of fact came up, I do not know how, 
and one of the party said : " Who is the most 
tactful person jou know? " There was a silence, 
and then the same speaker said triumphantly, 
" Can you mention any one whom you consider 
really tactful ? " A name was mentioned. "Oh, 

no!" said another; "A is not tactful — he is 

only discreet; he talks about things and questions 
and facts, and never mentions people; he runs 
no risks. It is not tactful to keep out of hot 
water yourself. The point is to keep other people 
out of hot water." This was agreed to, and an- 
other name was mentioned. " Oh dear no! " said 
the same objector; " he is tactful in the sense that 
he is full of tact; but he is too full. It is as 
though he used too strong a scent, and too much 
of it. He always reminds me of a story of the 
late Master of Trinity. Someone, speaking of a 
popular preacher before him, said : ^ I like his 
sermons; he has so much taste.' ^ Yes,' said the 
Master, ^ and all of it so bad.' " This gravamen 
248 



Tactful ness 249 

was accepted, and a third name was mentioned, 
to which our critic said : ^^ No, he is not quite 
right either; the really tactful man should pour 

in both oil and wine. Now, B supplies the 

oil freely, but forgets the wine; he mollifies, he 
does not stimulate." 

One of the party then said very gently: " Well, 
we are talking frankly, and I will say that I 
consider myself a tactful person." There was a 
silence, while the circle reflected, and the chief 
critic said meditatively : " Dr. Johnson said once 
that he considered himself a polite man." There 
was a laugh at this, and we gave up trying to 
discover tactful people. 

The conversation then became general and im- 
personal, and though we came to no conclusions, 
we indulged in many brisk and inaccurate gen- 
eralisations, the chief of which I will try to 
summarise. 

The fact is that tactfulness, like humility, is 
one of the virtues the very existence of which 
depends upon its escaping observation. The mo- 
ment that it becomes conscious of itself, or that 
others become conscious of it, it either evaporates, 
or becomes almost offensive. It must be unsus- 
pected, like the onion in the salad; if it is de- 
tected, it is ipso facto excessive. It is very 
difficult to say in what tact exactly consists. 
Like all other subtle qualities, it is an instinctive 
gift; and though it can be improved upon, if it 
is there, it can hardly be acquired. The tactful 



250 Along the Road 

person, by some seci'et grace, keeps a hundred 
things in his mind, and applies them all. It is 
not that he says to himself, ^^ This topic will not 

do because A will not like it"; nor does he 

say, " This subject will interest the party and 

enable B to shine, so I will start it." He 

does not determine not to give offence, nor does 
he wish to draw people out, or to reconcile them. 
He is merely perfectly natural and kindly; he 
does not desire to please ; he simply wants every- 
one to be comfortable and natural too. The re- 
sult is that guests leave a party at which a tactful 
person has held the reins, not saying, " How 
well our host directed the conversation," but 
merely feeling that they have themselves been at 
their best; and thus tactfulness does not as a 
rule earn praise and gratitude; it only increases 
happiness and expansiveness. It cannot be noticed 
at the time, for the tactful person is the person 
with whom you feel instinctively at ease. The 
tactful person does not horrify the shy specialist 
by asking him, in a silence, a leading question 
on his subject; while if a dangerous topic is in- 
troduced, he does not interrupt, but steers the 
talk delicately into safer waters. He modulates, 
so to speak, out of the key; he does not crash 
in some inharmonious chord. 

Tactfulness does not by any means aim at 
producing a kind of sunset effect on a conversa- 
tion, a harmonious golden light over everything. 
The tactful person will often provoke an argu- 



Tactfulness 251 

ment, and even encourage a heated controversy, 
if he knows the antagonists can be trusted to 
use the gloves good-humouredly. He sees fair play 
and is time-keeper as well as referee. And he sees, 
too, when a party is inclined to listen rather 
than to talk, and has the power of talking gen- 
erally but unobtrusively — unobtrusively, because 
the essential point is that he should never arouse 
jealousy, or create a suspicion that the situation 
is being handled, still less adroitly handled. And 
thus the tactful person can hardly be enthusiastic, 
because enthusiasm implies a certain combative- 
ness; but he must be able to appreciate en- 
thusiasm in other people, and, what is more, to 
interpret and harmonise enthusiasm in such a way 
as to make it seem natural and agreeable, in- 
stead of appearing, as it often does, superior and 
fanatical. And the real reason why the tactful 
person is so rare is that tactfulness implies a 
union of a great many qualities, quick observa- 
tion of tones of voice and facial expression and 
little gestures, a good memory, genuine sympathy, 
good-humour, promptness, justice, and a consider- 
able range, not only of intellectual interests, but 
of current interests of every kind. And this 
combination is not a common one. 

Such was our talk, amusing enough, and not ex- 
hausting. We picked up some pretty thoughts by the 
way, and we separated under a vow that we would 
search like Diogenes for tactful persons, and when 
we had found them be careful not to betray them. 



ON FINDING ONE'S LEVEL 

It always makes me very suspicious of a man's 
I)erceptiou or knowledge of the world to hear him 
generalise easily about people. A man who says 
.that children always know at first sight who loves 
them, and who does not, and that all boys are 
generous and all young men confident and all 
women unselfish, is a person from whose conversa- 
tion I do not expect much benefit. The more one 
knows of people, the more mysterious and un- 
accountable they become. But there is one feel- 
ing which I think is common to most human 
beings towards the end of their time of education, 
when they are about to enter the world. By that 
time, after a strict course of examination, we 
know fairly w^ell where we stand intellectually. 
We know how well we play games, we have few 
delusions about our personal appearance, except 
a vague idea that we look rather well at certain 
angles and in a subdued light. But we almost 
all of us believe that we are interesting and effec- 
tive in our own way. We think that if we could 
describe our views and opinions, they would be 
seen to be sensible, and to have a certain charm ; 
252 



On Finding One's Level 253 

and we many of ns ])e]ieve that, under favourable 
circumstances and with the right material, we 
have a degree of real effectiveness. One does not 
wish to deprive people too quickly of their illu- 
sions, because they produce a certain sunshine of 
the mind, without which happy and contented 
work is hardly possible. But, curiously enough, 
it is not, as a rule, the gifted people who are 
complacent and conceited. They are generally 
clever enough to see that their best is not very 
good, and to perceive their many deficiencies. 
Complacency is not a thing which depends upon 
applause or admiration : it is a quality of mind, 
and often robustly independent of all results and 
comparisons. But even if we are not complacent, 
we most of us take up our work in the world with 
a vague presage of success, for the simple reason 
that successfulness is not by any means the result 
of commanding qualities, but a quality in itself, 
a blend of tenacity and tact. The work of the 
world does not for the majority of people require 
commanding ability or ornamental gifts. It re- 
quires good-humour and patience and industry 
and the power of taking pains. 

Well, we shoulder our burden and go out into 
the world, and at once the process of sorting 
begins. A few people have a stroke of luck at 
the outset. They slip into a good opening; they 
get an appointment which is rather better than 
they deserve ; they know some one with influence, 
who makes the first step an easy one. But most 



254 Along the Road 

of us find ourselves with a perfectly ordinary and 
commonplace task, with an income to earn and 
a place to make. Perhaps for a few years we are 
not wholly contented; we think we have not had 
quite a fair chance; and then we find that it 
needs all our powers even to do our own simple 
piece of work satisfactorily; we begin to see that 
we must not hope for any great recognition, and 
that strokes of luck are not things to be depended 
upon. Then the years begin to fly past us like 
telegraph posts. We settle into our work, we 
marry, the income has to be Increased; if pos- 
sible, the children have to be educated. We have 
been in the habit of considering ourselves, on the 
whole, young people, with a good many pos- 
sibilities ahead. Suddenly we awake to the fact 
that we are five and forty, a little stiffer in the 
joints than formerly, with streaks of grey in our 
hair, or perhaps a tendency to baldness. And 
then we realise with a shock that our prospect 
of any great development of life and fortune is 
over; we are ordinary citizens, undistinguished 
persons, with our position and our income and 
our abilities perfectly clear to every one, and 
with no particular hope of being or becoming 
anything else than what we are. 

It is then, I think, that the great strain of life 
falls upon a man. He can be interesting and 
romantic no longer; he has lost his vague am- 
bitions. There are no more worlds to conquer, 
and he would not know how to set about con- 



On Finding One's Level 255 

quering them if there were. He is at the dividing 
of the ways. He cannot even persuade himself 
that he is particularly effective at his own job. 
He can do it, perhaps, conscientiously and faith- 
fully; but he cannot hope to be told to take 
dominion over ten cities. 

It is then, I believe, that the real great choice of 
life is made. If a man is sensible, good-humoured, 
and right-minded, he shrugs his shoulders with a 
smile, and reflects that though he has not made 
a great splash, he has found an abundance of 
good things by the way. He has a loving wife, 
perhaps, and a handful of healthy and well-con- 
ducted children. He has all sorts of human ties, 
with friends, colleagues, servants. He has a com- 
fortable home, enough leisure, a pleasant hobby 
or two. Life has not been a startling or a sur- 
prising thing; he has not been crowned or vene- 
rated; he has not made a fortune nor become 
famous ; but he has a perfectly well-defined place, 
and an honest bit of work behind him and before 
him. There is nothing splendid about it, but 
there need be nothing sordid either. He has had 
his share, no doubt, of cares, griefs, anxieties; 
and they have taught him, perhaps, that he must 
not count on continuance ; and he is happier still 
if he has found the need and proved the worth 
of faith, to look beyond the visible horizon for 
a further dawning. And then if he is wise he 
settles down with a certain restfulness to life and 
duty and kindliness. The love of the little circle 



256 Along the Road 

multiplies and throws out fresh tendrils. He sees 
that the glitter and brightness that at first allured 
him, the hope of marvellous successes and great 
surprises, was not really that of which he was 
in search. He has found his level at last, and 
with it peace. 

But it sometimes takes a man in a very dif- 
ferent way. He begins to think he has had no 
luck, to envy and malign his contemporaries who 
have made what he calls a better thing out of it 
all. He begins to be withdrawn into himself in 
a sort of listless bitterness, to call his friend the 
Canon a windbag, and his acquaintance the 
Member of Parliament a time-server. He begins 
to think that it is in virtue of his own candour 
and rugged honesty that he is stranded, and that 
the world only rewards quacks and opportunists. 
Tn these unwholesome exercises he loses all the 
zest and flavour of life; he gets particular about 
his little comforts, tyrannical in his family. He 
becomes a man with a grievance, and when he is 
shunned as a bore, he puts it down to snobbery. 
He thinks that the world is against him, when 
it is he that is against the world. 

Now the question arises how this melancholy 
kind of business can be avoided, and it is very 
difficult to give an answer. Is it inevitable that 
the world should turn out a dreary place for a 
good many people: for disappointed, ill-paid men ; 
for lonely and loveless women ; for all suspicious 
and cross-grained and ill-conditioned persons? 



On Finding One's Level 257 

The approaches of dreariness are so insidious, and 
so much of it comes from physical causes, want 
of exercise and congenial occupation, and, worst 
of all, from want of hopefulness. When people 
have drifted into this condition it is hard to 
see what can uplift them. The cure must be- 
gin, if it begins at all, long before the need for 
it is apparent. The mischief arises, in the first 
place, from a low kind of ambition, a desire for 
material success and comfortable consideration; 
and it arises in the second place, from living by 
impulse rather than by discipline, from behaving 
as one is inclined to behave, and not as one knows 
one ought to behave. If a man could find a medi- 
cine for middle-aged discontent, it would be the 
greatest discovery in the world. Some people 
find it in religion, and it may be said that in 
religion only, using the word in its largest and 
noblest sense, can the cure be found. If a man 
or a woman in that frame of mind can but believe 
that the life and the soul of all mortals is indeed 
dear to God, if he can lay hold of the blessed 
fact that in a real surrender alone can strength 
be found, then peace can creep back into the 
shattered hopes and the broken designs. The only 
thing we can do is to realise that we are here 
to learn and apprehend something, and that peace 
lies in this alone — not in the fortune we have 
made, or the renown that we have won. Those 
are pleasant and sunshiny things enough, but if 
one has once been confronted with a desperate 



258 Along the Road 

sorrow, oue kuows that they have not the smallest 
power to distract or sustain. And in the sur- 
render itself there is indeed a secret joy. The 
soul folds its tired wings and waits for the truth 
that it has missed to be shown to it; then, and 
not till then, the smallest moments and incidents 
of life begin to have a significance; the message 
comes fast, when the soul's complaint is hushed 
into silence. It matters then little how we are 
placed, how humble our work may be, because we 
begin to taste not the praise of men but the gifts 
of God. Then the little stream, fretted and 
broken in rocky places and narrow channels, 
creeps out into the bosom of the lake, where 
sound and foam no longer are heard; and so the 
true level is found at last. 



THE INNER LIFE 

Spring came on us to-day in the deep country 
with a sudden leap. It has been a long and 
dreary winter here, sullen, rainy weather, and 
the earth seems soaked like a sponge. Where- 
ever one goes, in the fields, in the lanes, there 
are runnels and water-breaks that I have never 
seen before. The flowers have been doing their 
best to appear, but the coverts and hedges are 
very leafless as yet, though I saw yesterday that 
lovely empurpled flush over a great wood of 
birches that veils a wild moorland tract, which 
tells of mounting sap and life revived. Yesterday 
the wind, which has been buff'eting and volleying 
up from the south-west, died down, and to-day 
the sun shines out, and everything seems glad to 
be alive. It is not wholly delightful to one who, 
like myself, has the constitution of a polar bear! 
The languor of spring is a doubtful pleasure. It 
wrung from Keble, in The Christian Year, the 
only almost petulant complaint which that very 
controlled writer ever Indulged in. He writes: 

" I sigh, and fain could wish this weariness were 
death!" 

259 



26o Along the Road 

I do not feel that! There is something deli- 
cious about it, if one is not hard at work. But 
I am so wedded to what I call my work, that 
I half grudge these days when one cannot attend 
to business; and yet if one goes out, one knows 
what Homer means when he says that a man's 
knees and heart are loosed. One is unstrung, 
undecided, vague. I do not at all like the languor 
about three degrees this side of faintness, which 
Keats said was one of the luxuries of spring; I 
like to be judiciously and temperately frozen, 
when all that one does is sharp-set and has a 
keen edge to it. But that is only a private and 
personal opinion. 

Yet to-day, as I walked in country lanes and 
among copses, T became aware that something 
very beautiful and wonderful was going on. The 
birds fluted deliciously, the primroses peeped like 
stars from the mossed roots of hedgerow trees, 
the pretty lilac cuckoo-flower pushed up freshly 
beside the runnel. The annual miracle was being 
performed, and oh, how swiftly and sweetly I 
Everything glad to live, the tree unfolding its 
green tufts, the flower spreading itself in the sun. 
The children whom I met had their hands full 
of blooms. I am afraid that as I get older, I 
like that less and less. I cannot help feeling that 
the flower has a dim consciousness of its own, 
and that the unfurling of the bud must be a joyful 
excitement. It must hurt, I think, to have one's 
arrangements interfered with and one's pretty 



The Inner Life 261 

limbs torn away. Even if the broken stem does 
not actnallv aclie, it must be a disappointment 
not to have the sun in one's face, and to have 
all one's cheerful plans for getting to the light 
swept away by little hot fingers. I hate to see 
woodland corners strewed with withering flowers, 
just picked for a whim, their sweet breath inhaled, 
and then dropped to wither. 

Then, too, I think as I walk, how, as the years 
go on, the springs begin to race past one, like 
telegraph posts in a train ! How immensely long 
the seasons of childhood were, yet now a year 
seems to count for nothing; and I love life so 
much that it is rather terrible to have the beauti- 
ful days race away so fast. I spent last Easter 
in the Cots wolds with two perfectly cheerful and 
good-tempered younger friends. It was one of 
those rare holidays when everything went well 
from start to finish ; day after day entirely happy 
and delightful; and, what is more rare still, I 
knew that it was delightful; and yet it is gone 
and can never come back; and when one is fifty, 
and finds oneself heavier, slower, more elderly 
every year, one knows that those blessed intervals 
are precious things indeed. 

That is one of the puzzles, why one is pushed 
and driven along so fast through the days, with 
everything hurrying and hastening to some un- 
dreamed-of goal. The strange part of it is that 
one is given the power of imagining that it might 
be permanent and everlasting. One sits in the 



262 Along the Road 

sun, the breeze coming sweet through the sweet- 
briar bush, tallviug idly witli the friend, who un- 
derstands perfectly, of memories and plans, of 
things and people. The kitten wanders about 
exploring the laurels with a fearful joy, and com- 
ing back at intervals for a little sympathy. A 
chaffinch on the ivied wall chiri)s and chuckles 
at intervals, with a tiny torrent of song. So 
surely it might be for ever? A carriage drives 
up, some one crosses the lawn ; one has to go 
and be civil to some callers to whom one has 
nothing to say; the post comes in and there are 
a pack of letters to answer. Is it always to be 
so? Can one never have the peace one dreams of? 
Well, I do not know I On a day like this, when 
I walk in the quiet woods, I am conscious of a 
strangely double nature at work within me. On 
the surface there is a busy brain, full of ideas 
and plans and work, thinking out little problems, 
devising replies to troublesome questions, doing 
other people's business, finding endless things to 
do, struggling to put ideas into shape. Much of 
it does not seem particularly worth doing, I con- 
fess. A good deal of it seems like the trouble 
which nations take in increasing armaments in 
the hope of never having to use them. If one 
could clear away all the unnecessary work of the 
world, be content with simple shelter, well-worn 
clothes, inexpensive meals, a few good books, one 
would have time to live; and then suddenly, as 
one reflects, one becomes aware of a self which 



The Inner Life 263 

lies far deeper than the busy brain; a self Avliicli 
goes quietly and slowly on its way, doing its own 
secret business; something very old and simple 
and straightforward, which listens to one's rest- 
less plans and schemes as one listens to the talk 
of a child, and knows that its real life is not 
there. That deeper, inner self is what loves and 
lives; it does one's feeling for one; those strange 
deep attractions which one feels, not too often, 
for other people, which seem so inevitable and 
instinctive, so far removed from any question of 
duty or reason, these come from the inner self; 
and that deeper self, too, is what cares with a 
kind of intent passion for certain scenes and 
jjlaces. If I go, for instance, to beautiful moun- 
tain country, my upper mind is stirred and 
pleased and amused by the strange forms of the 
hills, their craggy faces, their sweeping moor- 
lands, their falling streams, but the inner self 
is silent and unmoved; and yet when I come to 
walk as I walk to-day in English country, with 
wooded valleys, broad ploughlands, pleasant home- 
steads, old cottages, the inner sense is all alive, 
loving the scene Avith a quite unintelligible pas- 
sion, crying out constantly with a deep emotion ; 
and yet I can give no sort of reason for its fancy. 
I have no associations with the spot, except that 
I have lived there for a few years; yet the inner 
sense seems at home, and embraces all the circle 
of the hills with a hungering kind of love that 
would kiss the very soil, so dear it is. 



264 Along the Road 

That inner self is the spirit of man, I think, 
with a long life behind it and before it; one can- 
not mould it or control it; it is oneself; it com- 
mands and does not ohej, it lives and does not 
reason. I do not care if my brain dies, if I lose 
even my treasure of memories and hopes, if I 
forget my labour and suffering; for the inner self 
hardly suffers at all ; its joy and its serenity are 
troubled by the sorrows and pains of the body, 
but only as the wind ruffles the surface of the 
sleeping lake. 

When it comes to the deeper thoughts of the 
soul, it is the outer self which investigates, per- 
ceives, argues, weighs, presents its case; but it 
is the inner self which chooses, and which knows 
what belongs to its peace. Why we go astray, 
why we are suspicious, contentious, ill-humoured, 
wrathful, is because we learn, too many of us, to 
live in the outer part of our minds. Much of 
our unhappiness in the world comes from mis- 
taking where our real life lies. It is easy to 
make this mistake, if our outer thought is vivid 
and strong; and the unhappiest people are those 
who are always urging the suggestions of the 
outer thought against the dictates of the inner 
soul. What we have to try to do is to live more 
in deep, strong, satisfying things; to live more 
by instinct and faith, and less by argument and 
scheme. For it is certain that to live too much 
in our outer consciousness is to lose time, to 
delay our progress; we must dare to trust the 



The Inner Life 265 

inner serenity, to act as our heart tells us to 
act, not to be afraid of quiet and simple life, not 
to let our reason and our imagination terrify us. 
Then our life attains its true proportions; and 
we can heal the fret of life, by a wise passivity, 
a recei\ing of quiet impressions, by trusting the 
strong and untroubled soul within. 

I was talking only yesterday to a wise and 
tender-hearted physician, who has been a true 
friend to me for many years. He was telling 
me of a talk he had been having with a brilliant 
man of science about the origin and development 
of life. " I said to him," said my friend, " that 
he might push back the process of life to the 
ultimate jelly of protoplasm, the cell which just 
multiplies itself and does no more; there you 
have it, the primal vital impulse — the indestruc- 
tible force of life! One cannot trace it back 
further, but it is there, and no thought can ob- 
literate it. It exists — it cannot end or begin; it 
is just the thought of God." 

These words came into my head as I walked 
to-day ; it was the thought of God ! It was round 
me on every side, in the woods and fields, in the 
air and light, that vast force of life : I was of it, 
included in it, moving with it. How vain was 
my reluctance, my timidity, my forecast of death, 
ray output of schemes and plans! Every single 
power and quality that I had, it was all a gift, 
a thing made and moved forward, a force im- 
perishable and indestructible. Could I not re- 



266 Along the Road 

joice in tlie tliougiit, in the richness of experience, 
tlio beaut}', llie interest, the emotion, the energy 
of it all? ^"^ Yes, a thousand times I" said the 
spirit within me. " Move onwards serenely, east 
aside regret, cleanse and purify life, only be un- 
dismaj^ed and hopeful, as you turn page after 
page of the revelation of God. That is the mean- 
ing," said the soul, " of the infinite desires you 
feel, the emotion that would embrace everything, 
the love that you would offer to all hearts, if you 
could but draw near to them." 

And I think that my spirit spoke truly, for T 
realised that it was a larger voice that I heard 
than any message of my own that I could devise. 

And here I think that one's will can help one; 
one can determine to cast out of one's life the 
petty and distracting cares that bring one down 
so low; one cannot avoid them, of course; but 
one can look through them and past them, not 
linger over them, not get entangled in them. One 
must take life as it comes; but one must not be 
taken in by it, must not make claims or recrimina- 
tions, must not be dissatisfied or jealous or 
solemn about it; it is easy to feel that one has 
missed op])ortunities, easy to grudge the successes 
of one's comrades, easy to think one has not had 
fair chances; but that is all a false valuation; 
it is part of the deceit which the outer self weaves 
over its work, like the web of a spider over a 
window-pane. Every one has the chance of ex- 
perience, and the simpler the materials are, the 



The Inner Life 267 

less temptation is there to be deceived. We are 
here to learn rather than to teach to perceive 
our losses rather than to reckon our gains. 

" Yes/' a reader may say, " it is easy enough 
for a comfortable and well-to-do person, in a 
quiet country house, to write thus. What does 
he know of life's difficulties and troubles?" 
Well, I can only say quite plainly that I have 
had plenty of tragic material in my life — sorrows, 
failures, long and disabling illness, disappoint- 
ments, fears, miseries. I believe that poverty is 
the only human trouble I have not had to bear. 
I have not found life easy or triumphant; and 
I may say humbly that the only ease I have ever 
had is the sense that I have been borne along, 
with all my little dilemmas, all my faults and 
failures, in the great and merciful hands of God ; 
and now I am not happy so much as interested, 
because I do believe with all my weak heart in 
the richness and greatness in store for every 
single one of us that moves beneath these dark 
skies and through these uncertain days. 

Yet here I am in the springtime with every- 
thing jubilant, thoughtless, deliciously alive about 
me. What folly, nay worse than folly, to cloud 
the soft and serene air with regrets, question- 
ings, repinings! If we can but pierce through 
the outer crust of things, we shall find the clear 
water of life moving below; we are in the city 
all the time, made musical with the sound of 
waters, whose foundations are wells of living 



268 Along the Road 

light, if only we have eyes to see it. Here and 
now is our joy, in every act and word, if we 
can but trust the inner life, the inner heart; if 
we can but neglect the voice of fear and the 
deceitful whispers of the world, and see that 
what matters is that we should fill up with 
wise patience the little gaps of hoi)e, as we 
walk together, quietly and cheerfully, along the 
heavenward road. 



ON BEING SHOCKED 

Many years ago I had a friend with whom I used 
to discuss all sorts of things with entire freedom 
— books, people, places, events, ideas. But soon 
after we left the University, a change took place 
in him. He fell under certain influences — I need 
not say what they were; but I became gradually 
aware, in meeting him, that it was becoming in- 
creasingly difficult to talk over questions with 
him. He began, I thought, to draw a line round 
many things. If it was a question of talking 
about events, he would say that he did not like 
gossip; if a person was mentioned, he would say 
that So-and-so was his friend, and he would rather 
not criticise him; if ideas came up, he would 
say, with obvious emotion, that the particular 
thought was a very sacred one to him, and that 
he must be excused from arguing about it. This 
was not done dogmatically or fiercely, but gently 
and even shamefacedly. The result, however, was 
that our intercourse lost all its frankness, and 
for me most of its pleasure, and faded away, as 
pleasant things must sometimes fade. I do not 
think our mutual regard was altered. I would 

269 



270 Along the Road 

have trnsted him implicitly, and, if need had been, 
T would have made any call upon his friendship, 
dictated or allowed by affection, with a perfect 
confidence that it would be generously met; and 
I am sure he would have done the same with me. 

But the freedom of talk, of discussion, of state- 
ment was gone, simply because I was always 
afraid of wounding some susceptibility or touch- 
ing some shrinking emotion. 

I do not say this to prove that I have retained 
an open mind, and I am quite prepared to be- 
lieve that he is right and that I am wrong. The 
question really is not to what extent one is en- 
titled to hold things sacred, because I do not 
dispute any one's right to do that; but to what 
extent one is entitled to claim the silence of 
others, or their assent to what one holds sacred. 
The point is whether one loses or gains by such 
a process, and whether one may claim to hold 
opinions in such a way as to entitle one to 
disapprove of or to be pained by any species of 
disagreement. 

Of course, it is all a question of where the line 
is to be drawn. No one could possibly claim to 
hold all his own beliefs, opinions, and views so 
sacred that he could not bear to have any of them 
disputed or called in question. I doubt myself 
whether it is wise or right to hold any opinion 
at all so sacred as to claim that no one shall 
venture to disagree with it; there are many things 
in the world that must be onlv a matter of sub- 



On Being Shocked 271 

jective opiuion, and of which no objective proof 
is possible. Some of the best things in the world 
— religion, beauty, affection — are of that nature. 
One may have a serene and unshaken conviction 
on these points, and one may desire with all one's 
heart that others may share one's conviction. 
But, after all, they are only deductions from 
one's own experience, and others may have dif- 
ferent experiences and draw different deductions. 
It seems to me that no advance is possible, if 
any one can claim to be infallible. When it 
comes to discussing an opinion, I am disposed 
to give full weight to anything which may be 
urged against it, and I wish to hear any valid 
objection to it. I may be converted and per- 
suaded, but I do not mean to be dictated to. I 
do not think it is desirable, on any subject in the 
world, to make up one's convictions into a bundle, 
as early in life as possible, and to admit of no 
rearrangement or addition. The true consistency 
is not to hold to an opinion, but to be ready to 
change it, if one sees reason to do so. 

]\rany of the things that my friend said to me 
in the old days were true and fruitful; I saw his 
point of view, and perceived that he had reasons 
on his side; but one never arrives at any com- 
prehensiveness at all if one cannot admit of any 
compromise. I remember one argument I had 
with my friend when the ground was getting 
limited. I said to him, " 1 do not agree with 
3^our opinion, as I understand it. If you will 



272 Along the Road 

explain it, perhaps I shall feel differently." 
" Xo," he said, '' T can't explain it. The thing 
seems to me so niiqnestionable and so sacred that 
I cannot even risk speaking of it to any one who 
does not share my conviction. It would be a 
kind of profanity to express my thoughts on the 
subject." 

That seems to me like a deliberate sacrifice of 
all frankness, a decision that one will not share 
or compare one's experiences at all. We must 
be all agreed that there is a great and deep ele- 
ment of uncertainty and mystery about life. 
One's own experience must be limited ; and the 
only hope of getting at anything real is not to 
measure eyerythiug by one's own rule and line, 
but to see how others make their measurements. 
The people I have got most out of in every way 
are the people with clear minds, who are willing 
to listen to one's own ^aews, and to say frankly 
what they themselves think. Impatience, con- 
tempt, derisiveness, are the qualities which hinder 
and obstruct. What helps things along is frank 
sympathy, and the recognition of the right of 
others to differ from oneself. 

But then it may, of course, be said : " Oh, but 
if one feels strongly about a subject one must 
be allowed to express oneself strongly — that is 
how moral victories are won ! " I do not believe 
it. It may be good for a weaker nature to follow 
in the track of a stronger will for a time. But 
the essence of life and progress is some time or 



On Being Shocked 273 

other to have real opinions of one's own, and not 
to have adopted the opinions of others wholesale. 

And so I believe that if a man finds himself 
increasiuglj impatient of opposition, more in- 
clined to accuse of stupidity and irreverence 
those who hold different views, more liable to 
be shocked, he should not welcome it as a sign 
of a firmer grasp of principles, but as a sign that 
he is losing the power of brotherly and Christian 
sympathy. The danger and the injury of dogma- 
tism is so awful, the power it has of alienating 
others, the selfish withdrawal into some private 
stronghold of thought which underlies it, are so 
disastrous, that its apparent gains are not to be 
reckoned in comparison with its inevitable losses. 

But will not, it may be said, this attempt at 
comprehensive sympathy weaken our decisiveness 
and our resolution? Not at all! It is the high- 
est sign of strength to be chivalrously gentle; 
and in order to be potent, strength should be 
unconscious of itself. The moment that we feel 
that we can bend others to our will, that we can 
silence them, that we can make them act as we 
wish, that moment we are in the grip of a terrible 
temptation; and what makes it the more subtle 
a temptation is that we may be so conscious of 
our own pure and high intentions. We ma}^ have 
to act decisively and firmly, but if we extort sub- 
mission, we must be careful to give our reasons; 
and if it is sometimes inevitable that we should 
insist upon obedience, we ought to recognise 
18 



274 Along the Road 

that it is obedieuce and not agreement that we 
demand. 

And then, too, what havoc it makes of real 
relations with people if this closeness of thought 
prevails! I am not speaking of mere acquaint- 
ances, with whom some reticence must probably 
be practised; but even there I am not sure; I 
think that the closer one can get to all people, 
the more one can open one's mind and heart to 
them, the better for us all. What a comfort it 
is to meet a man or a woman, and to find that one 
can dispense with all the posturing and fencing 
and the other practices of polite society, and talk 
at once openly and frankly about the things for 
which one cares. People who can do that have 
a simply marvellous power of evoking the best 
out of other people. No one wants to live in an 
unreal world; the caution and timidity which we 
feel and show is all an old survival from the time 
when life w^as made up of strife and enmity, and 
when one dared not say what one felt or thought 
from a savage kind of fear that it might be used 
against one. A certain amount of this reticence 
is inevitable in the case of young people, because 
young people are more merciless and more deri- 
sive, and altogether more uncivilised than older 
people. But as one gets older, the more one can 
dispense with false shame and selfish caution and 
mistrust of others the better. 

I sat the other night at dinner next a famous 
man; he was perfectly courteous and kindly, but 



On Being Shocked 275 

he would not show me what was in his mind at 
all ; perhaps he thought me Impertinent or in- 
discreet for trying to turn the talk on to matters 
of intimate belief and opinion. I do not know! 
but he uttered no sort of personal preference and 
made no frank admissions ; till I felt at last that 
I might as well have sat by a fine statue, all 
marble within. And then, as good fortune would 
have it. I fell in after dinner with another man, 
famous too, who engaged with ease and humour 
and zest in a pleasant discussion about the due 
balance of society and solitude, and said a whole 
host of refreshing and charming things, which 
did me good to hear, and some of which I hope 
to remember. He did not give me the impression 
of reflecting whether I was too unimportant a 
person to be made the recipient of his confidences. 
He just made the most of an easy human prox- 
imity, and shared his experiences and beliefs 
frankly and charmingly, so that I recognised at 
once a fellow-pilgrim, who knew himself to be 
bound upon the same interesting, wonderful, de- 
lightful, mysterious journey as myself, and who 
was ready to beguile the tedium of the way with 
discourse of adventures and hopes and desires. To 
meet others cheerfully, directly, unsuspiciously; 
not to be anxious to make one's own opinions 
pievail — that is the secret of all the influence 
worth having. 



HOMELY BEAUTY 

Our code and schedule of beauty is, I often feel, 
a very formal affair. Either we are afraid or 
ashamed to differ from received opinions, or we 
have never thought of revising the code we 
adopted in our youth, or we do not really look 
at things, or we do not care about beauty at all. 
For one or other of these very insufficient reasons, 
we go on dully and tamely, trying no experiments, 
indulging heavy habits of thought. T, who hold 
inconsistency to be a high virtue — by which I 
mean the power of changing one's mind for suf- 
ficient reasons — think it a real duty to try to 
have new points of view, and to be constantly 
taking stock of opinions, to see if I really hold 
them, if they really grow there, or if they have 
only been stuck into my mind, like flowers into 
a vase. 

Now Ruskin made such an outcry against all 
factories and foundries, all places where labour 
is applied on a large scale, involving high chim- 
neys and torrents of smoke, that the average 
Briton takes for granted that the whole thing is 
ugly and horrible. I am inclined to believe that 
276 



Homely Beauty 277 

tliis is a gigiuitic mistake, and that there is a 
\oiy real majesty about these big structures, 
with tlieir volleying chimne^^s, their long rows 
of windows, their grumbling and rattling gear. 
They are quite unpretentious, in the first place. 
They make no attempt to conceal that they are 
doing the work of the world. It may be dirty 
work, but it has to be done, and thus they have 
the first beauty of appropriateness. They are 
like great fortresses of industry, and have all 
the solemn effect of size. I do not think they 
would be improved by having rows of Gothic 
windows and a chimney built like Giotto's cam- 
panile, because they would be pretending to 
be something else. It rather sickens me when I 
hear enthusiastic people compare the tower, let 
us say, of the town hall at Siena to a lily on its 
stem. It is a tower, and it ought to be like a 
tower, and not like a lily, the architecture of 
which is quite a different affair. I think it is 
quite fair to put a little ornament into a chimney, 
and a smooth cylinder of white brick, a mere tube 
set up on end, is almost too business-like an 
affair, though I am not at all prepared to con- 
cede that it is necessarily hideous. There is a 
chimney in London, of some electrical works, I 
think, near Regent's Park, which has a graceful 
floriation of masonry at the top, which I think 
is a very fine thing indeed; and on a sunshiny 
morning in London, when it is volleying steam, 
and stands up over that soft golden haze which 



278 Along the Road 

one sees only 011 a bright da^' in a maiiy-chimueyed 
town, it has a chariii about it which one need 
not go to Italy to capture. 

But I should like to take a much more homely 
and workaday affair than that. If any one who 
reads these lines knows the London and North- 
western Kailway well, he will remember, on pass- 
ing out of Carnforth Station, an immense factory, 
which I believe to be an iron-foundry. It is a 
collection of great iron towers, stained and 
streaked with red dust, with strange congloba- 
tions of huge tubes, wheels whirring on lofty 
stages of spidery rods, high galleries, long shoots, 
towering scaffolds, all rising above clustered sheds 
and sidings and piles of ore and shunted trucks. 
At night it is ablaze with great fires roaring 
and streaming into the air. The place by day is 
grim, gaunt, filthy, laborious-looking. To a mild 
literary man like myself, it is an entirely mys- 
terious building; I have no idea what all the 
tubes, cisterns, wheels, scaffoldings mean; but it 
is plain that something very real and vigorous 
is going on there. It seems to me to have a 
beauty of a very real and impressive kind. It is 
enormously big and imposing, the shapes are gro- 
tesque, bizarre, almost terrifying. It has a real 
solemnity — I had almost said sublimity — about 
it, with its plated iron towers and its frenzied 
apparatus. It stirs many emotions — wonder, 
amazement, and the fear, as Ecclesiastes says, 
" of that which is high." The very outlines of it 



Homely Beauty 279 

have a majesty of their own. I only know that 
1 look out for it with delight, and rivet my gaze 
upon it as long as it is visible. 

When I aired these views to an accomplished 
woman of my acquaintance who lives in the Lake 
country, and who has a real passion for hills and 
crags and running waters (to which I also lay 
claim), she shrugged her shoulders, smiled, and 
said I was too fond of being paradoxical. I could 
not persuade her that I meant what I said. She 
finally alleged that the fumes killed the vegeta- 
tion all round, to which I replied that the entire 
earth was not meant to be covered with vegeta- 
tion, and that after all it was only what farmers 
did in a different way. 

I do not mean, of course, that I want to intrude 
iron-foundries into all the loveliest places of the 
earth. Such a building would not look well be- 
tween Rydal Water and Grasmere; but that is 
because it would interfere with the harmony of 
the scene. But such buildings have their place, 
and I contend that in their place they are, or 
can be, beautiful. 

I travelled the other day on a misty morning 
from Cambridge to St. Pancras. x\t Cambridge, 
close to the station, is an immense mill, consisting 
of two many-storied buildings of white brick, now 
much weathered, connected by a high gallery. 
The architect has put a little finish into them, 
and one of the buildings terminates with a 
classical pediment which has real grace. But I 



28o Along the Road 

am sure that the building lias a fine quality of 
its own, given by its height, its size, its purpose- 
fulness. At least I feel the beauty of it — I sup- 
pose that is the most one can claim — and I think 
that other people would find it beautiful too, if 
it were not the dull fashion to think otherwise, 
and therefore never to look at it with the idea 
of being pleased by it. All that journey was full 
for me of the same sort of beauties. The great 
black mouths of tunnels, solid-arched, low-hung, 
with the steam floating about them, the huge gas- 
reservoirs, standing up inside the filigree screens 
of ironwork ; the vast span of St. Pancras station 
— and I am sure, by the way, that the St. Pancras 
Hotel is a building which with an added toucli 
of age will be a thing which travellers will come 
from far to see; all these things in the misty air 
had a real grandeur, and grandeur not diminished 
for me because they stood for work and life and 
energy, and were not lazy, luxurious, artistic 
affairs, built to please the eyes of leisurely 
persons. 

There is a huge factory near the line — I do 
not remember exactly where — which has a pro- 
digious tower of wood, stained and streaked with 
the drippings of some boiling fluid, which seems 
to me to be a really magnificent affair in outline, 
structure, and texture; and I believe that if one 
only can regard it candidly and expectantly, one 
can detect, and be impressed by, its artistic 
quality. 



Homely Beauty 281 

I do not mean that one should exactly set up 
factories as rivals, for aesthetic sensation, to 
Gothic cathedrals. Ely, rising on a spring morn- 
ing above its apple-orchards, is a lovely object 
enough, though I am barbarous enough to object 
to its fussy lantern, and to believe that nothing 
at all can justify and nothing but age make 
tolerable, rows of Gothic pinnacles — spikes of 
stone grotesquely and fretfully crocketed. The 
vast western tower of Ely, so quiet and dark 
and simple, is worth fifty churches in the dec- 
orated style, which I believe to have been truly 
decadent in its avoidance of jdain spaces, and its 
packing of every inch with restless and often un- 
meaning ornament. And at Ely I can see a real 
beauty in the great polygonal brick water tower, 
with its intricate arches and severe outlines. 

I am sure it is a dilettante business to confine 
our sense of beauty to Gothic vaultings and 
traceries, lovely as they often are. I believe in 
my heart of hearts that classical architecture, 
such as St. Paul's, is a finer, nobler, more stately 
thing, in its solid appropriateness to human need, 
its grave dignity, than any Gothic building, which 
is often in fact a kind of confectionery in stone. 
As one gets older one loves plainness, simplicity, 
proportion, stillness, usefulness, better and better, 
and comes more and more to mistrust ornament 
and decoration. But the point is to enlarge and 
extend our sense of what is beautiful and 
grand. Of course when one is dealing with things 



282 Along the Road 

like pictures, stained-^^lass, wood-carving — all the 
iniiinter and more delicate works of the human 
hand and mind, one is face to face with a dif- 
ferent question. They are deliberately ingenious 
and fanciful things, and grace is the first quality 
we demand of them. But when it comes to build- 
ings, we are brought into touch with a different 
range of emotions; we must think what they 
mean, what they stand for, what part of human 
life and toil they represent. And I for one think 
an old homestead, among its ricks and barns and 
byres, a far more beautiful and moving thing 
than an elaborate manor-house or villa, in park 
or garden, because the latter stands for idle 
leisure, and the former for human life and work. 
The things that are made for use are what please 
best, and not the things that are made for pleas- 
ure; and if the homely things have just enough 
touch of beauty about them to show that the 
maker loved his work, and took a pride in it, and 
desired to make it seemly as well as useful, then 
I think we have the most moving quality of all. 

When one sees, in Northern or Western river 
valleys, old factories of mellowed brick, with 
quaint wooden galleries above the stream, with 
white casements, and perhaps a pretty pillared 
cupola for the bell, one sees at once that they 
are altogether pleasing and harmonious things, 
and the dirt and litter of them a perfectly natural 
and not ungraceful mess; I suppose that the cul- 
tured dilettantes of the day, when such places 



Homely Beauty 283 

were built, turned up their noses at them and 
thought them horrible. We are, of course, very 
much at the mercy of autiquity just now, and 
even if we build a new building, we do all that 
we can to render it old in hue and shape; but 
I think that is a false and mean standard. If a 
place is solid, strong, and perfectly adapted to 
its purpose, there is no reason whatever why it 
should not be beautiful; and I am not being in 
the least paradoxical when I say that as I pass 
through the manufacturing districts of England 
I see many buildings of a perfectly commonplace 
kind, huge cubes of brick, with tiers of windows 
and a great chimnej^ towering over all, which 
give me a sense of real pleasure and satisfaction, 
because the thing is there for a purpose, and has 
been planned and built with that purpose in mind. 
I do not hope to convert every one to this view ; 
but T claim to have this advantage, that I have 
a wider range of pleasure thus than if I simply 
thought the whole abominable and hideous, and 
pined for waterfalls and peaks. Let me be more 
honest still, and say that though mountain scenery 
has an ineffable charm, it seems to me to have 
also a certain intoxicating quality which is not 
purely wholesome; I wear}^ of it far sooner than 
I weary of a simple pastoral country, with woods 
and pastures and hamlets. Of that I cannot con- 
ceive ever wearying at all. The English village, 
as" one sees it here in Cambridgeshire, with its 
orchards, its white-walled thatched cottages, its 



284 Along the Road 

simy)le church, its mauor-farm, with the pastures 
all about it, aud the pure line of the low wold 
above it, seems to me the sweetest and tenderest 
kind of thing that one can see anywhere, because 
it has all grown up so gently and naturally out 
of human love and toil, in the quiet places of the 
earth. But even so, I stick to my factories too, 
because they have grown up naturally enough, 
and are knit up with human life and endeavour. 
This is not a plea for one sort of beauty as against 
another; it is only a plea for men and women to 
use their eyes and hearts a little more simply; 
not to be deluded into thinking that beauty lies 
only in costly splendour and elaborate ornament, 
but in the frank expression of use and order and 
work, and all the other simple elements which 
make up life and peace and happiness. 



1 



BRAIN WAVES 

I WAS sitting a short time ago reading a letter 
in an arm-chair. Close to me at my left hand 
was sitting a friend at a desk^ writing. I said 
to him, " I have just had a very interesting and 

pathetic letter from B .'' He stared at me 

for a moment, with a look of such surprise, that 
T said, " What is the matter? " He said : " This 
is really too extraordinary; I had not thought of 

B for months. But the moment you began 

to speak, before you mentioned his name, it 
darted into my mind." 

This is only a rather striking instance of a 
phenomenon which probably most people have, at 
one time or other, experienced; a direct com- 
munication of thought, without any verbal inter- 
change, with some friend or acquaintance. The 
particular form in which I often experience it is 
to think persistently and without any obvious 
reason of some friend whom I perhaps have not 
seen for weeks, and on the following day to re- 
ceive a letter from him. But it takes place most 
frequently when one is in close proximity, and 
many people must know how one often, in talking 

285 



286 Along the Road 

with a friend, anticipates his iinuttered thought. 
This latter phenomeuon may no doubt partly 
arise from familiarity with a friend's method of 
thought, and be of the nature of unconscious 
inference. 

I think it may be said that no reasonable per- 
son who cares to study the transactions of the 
Psychical Society can possibly doubt that this 
force, which is now scientifically called telepathy, 
exists, though at present we know very little 
about it. It seems clear that if several people 
attempt to focus their thought upon some pre- 
determined object, and to read it into the mind 
of one who possesses the telepathic faculty, the 
latter can reproduce a sketch of the object which 
is unmistakable, even though the person acted 
upon may not be aware what he or she is draw- 
ing. There is one recorded experiment, which 
appeared to me, w^hen published, to be entirely 
convincing. The party agreed upon the object 
which they wished to have reproduced. The 
medium, a girl, was then introduced. In a mo- 
ment she drew on her paper a thing like a melon, 
with an elongated stalk. She then drew four 
parallel lines roughly down the centre of it. She 
then hesitated, and finally drew, on each side of 
the melon, but outside of its boundary line, a 
large capital S. She had not the least idea what 
it represented. But the object which had been 
agreed upon was a violin. The melon and stalk 
were the instrument, the four lines were the 



Brain Waves 287 

strings, and the letter S was the cuts, which 
are roughly like that letter, and are to be seen 
in any yiolin jdaced on each side of the strings, 
for the sake of resonance. One could imagine 
the unpractised operators going oyer the de- 
tails in their rainds. " There is the violin and 
its handle; there are the strings; there are the 
two cuts, like the letter B, on each side of 
the strings." The point is that though the 
scrawl was in itself unintelligible, yet all the 
salient features of the instrument were rudely 
reproduced. 

The thing itself is not nearly as antecedently 
incredible as the telephone or the Marconigram. 
If a man had prophesied a hundred years ago 
that one could hear a friend's yoice through a 
wire across the Atlantic, or that without any 
connecting wire an electrical message could be 
shot into the air and picked up by another iso- 
lated machine many miles away, he would have 
been considered a ridiculous romancer. And yet 
it is not inconceivable that, if the laws of tele- 
pathy are developed and investigated, two people 
may some day be able to exchange thoughts at 
a distance without visible or audible symbols. 
The appearances of people to their friends at the 
moment of death, a phenomenon the recurrence 
of which is quite beyond the possibility of scien- 
tific doubt, is a manifestation of the power. We 
know nothing of the medium of communication, 
or of the conditions under which it is possible, 



288 Along the Road 

but it would seem that some harmony or sym- 
pathy of thought is au essential basis, a fact 
which has its material complement in the har- 
mony of the ^larconi apparatus. 

When the first experiments in electricity were 
made, there were a number of scattered phe- 
nomena, such as the lightning, the attraction of 
rubbed amber, the sparks of the cat's back, which 
were all familiar and all unexplained. No one 
had ever thought of attributing all of these to 
one common cause, while no one dreamed of the 
possible adaptability of the underlying force to 
human uses. If some one had suggested that the 
force evolved from the rubbing of amber, for 
which the Greek word is Y]X£x.Tpov, would some 
day drive engines, light houses, and transmit in- 
stantaneous messages from continent to conti- 
nent, he would have been considered a mere 
fantastic dreamer. It may w^ell be that phenomena 
quite familiar to us now, such as national move- 
ments, the panics that spread like lightning 
through a crowd, the therapeutic influence of 
suggestion, the effects of mesmerism, may all be 
the result of some extensive spiritual force, the 
developments of which may have extraordinary 
and momentous effects upon the human race. I 
have no sort of doubt myself that we are on the 
eve of very curious discoveries in the psychical 
region, which may ultimately revolutionise our 
ideas of character-development and race-progress. 
But, on the other hand, I think that the investiga- 



Brain Waves 289 

tion of these deep secrets must be left to trained 
scientific intellects. They are not things for 
amateurs to dabble in. All the ill-advised tam- 
pering with occultism, all attempts to arrive at 
conclusions by impulsive short-cuts, all rash ex- 
periments with psychical forces seem to me not 
only risky, but positively dangerous. It resembles 
the meddling of children with corrosive acids and 
deadly poisons. It is very easy indeed for a 
weak and credulous nature to bemuse itself into 
a condition of fantastic susceptibility, which may 
wreck both intellect and happiness. The forces, 
whatever they are, are deeply mysterious, but 
their exact limits will probably some day be 
known and defined. They are not ascertained, 
but they are doubtless ascertainable. I believe 
myself that all tampering with the phenomena 
of so-called spiritualism by unscientific and sen- 
sitive people is both a symptom or a cause of 
morbidity, and should be, as far as possible, re- 
sisted and checked. On the other hand, I think 
that honour is due to those of trained observa- 
tion and well-balanced minds, who set themselves 
seriously to obtain and investigate such evidence 
as is available. 

On the other hand, it is perfectly justifiable 
for people of special temperament, not indeed 
to court such experiences, but to record them 
as faithfully as they can. Indeed, if a psy- 
chical experience befalls an entirely sane and 
normal person, it is advisable that it should be 



290 Along the Road 

carefuny noted and sent to the Psychical So- 
ciety, which undertakes the inyestigation of these 
problems. 

My own belief is that just as our globe has a 
material connection, so that the displacement of 
the smallest particle has an actual effect upon 
the whole mass, there is probably also a spiritual 
connection, so that eyery thought we think and 
every idea we conceive has some effect upon the 
whole spiritual community. We can no more be 
isolated in mind than we can be isolated in body; 
we feel, indeed, our own separate existence; but 
every individual's bodily frame is acted upon by 
a whole host of attractions and vibrations of 
which the individual is not conscious. If I raise 
my finger, the world is different from what it 
was a moment before. So in the spiritual region. 
If I think a good thought, or if I think an evil 
thought, the benefit and the mischief are not con- 
fined to myself, but the thought sends a ripple, 
however inconspicuous, through the spiritual 
horizon. The limitations of will, of impulse, of 
thought, of prayer, are unknown to us. But how- 
ever fruitless the thought or the prayer may seem, 
its vibration passes on its viewless flight through 
the spiritual substance of eternity. We dare not 
say that every prayer must find its material ful- 
filment; the interplay of spirit and matter is too 
complex for that; but it cannot fail of its spirit- 
ual effect, whatever that effect may be. And 
if the loneliest soul on earth, lying in darkness 



Brain Waves 291 

of spirit and pain of body, breathes one voice- 
less prayer upon the night, the world can never 
be the same as though that prayer had been 
unprayed. 



FOKGIVENESS 

I HEARD a sermon preached in a parish church 
the other day by a young curate, one of the most 
beautiful sermons in feeling and in form, both 
for its fine emotion and for its restraint of lan- 
guage, which I have heard for a long time. But 
the preacher took up a position which I will not 
say that I contest, but which I cannot understand. 

It was a sermon on forgiveness. God, said the 
preacher, freely and entirely forgives the sinner, 
and yet He exacts the full penalty for sin. 

I found myself wondering whether the word 
forgiveness could apply to such a transaction. 
Forgiveness, in the human sense of the word, 
means precisely the opposite. It means that in 
spite of some offence, the man offended against 
does not exact his due; that he forgets and puts 
out of his thoughts the offence, and reinstates the 
offender, just as though the offence had never 
been committed. To forgive a man a debt is to 
release him from the necessity of payment; and 
I cannot call it forgiveness if a man says to a 
debtor, " I freely and frankly forgive you the 
debt, but of course you will have to pay every 
292 



Forgiveness 293 

penny of it." That does not seem to me the kind 
of forgiveness indicated in the Gospel. In the 
parable about the lord and the debtor, when the 
man says, " Have patience with me, and I will 
pay thee all," he is not merely given extra time 
in which to pay his debt, but he is at once and 
entirely forgiven the whole debt without the sug- 
gestion of repayment. But when the man, in- 
stead of showing mercy, extorts his own petty 
debt from his own humble debtor, then he is 
penalised indeed! The words of the Lord's 
Prayer closely correspond to this : " Forgive us 
our trespasses, for we also forgive them that 
trespass against us." It cannot surely mean that 
God forgives us our sins, if we forgive those who 
sin against us, but that He exacts the whole 
penalty for sin, while the essence of our forgive- 
ness is that we should not exact it? It cannot 
be that our human forgiveness is meant to be 
absolute, while God is justified in conceding only 
a moral forgiveness? Should we hold up as a 
type of Christian forgiveness the case of a man 
whose son, we will say, had stolen some of his 
money, if the father were to say to the son, " I 
forgive you the theft, but I shall hand you over 
to the police, and the law must take its course" 
— should we call that forgiveness? 

And then, too, as far as the world goes, no one 
can maintain that sin is evenly and justly pun- 
ished. Carelessness is often very heavily punished 
indeed, while deliberate cruelty, if it be carefully 



294 Along the Road 

concealed, niav escape all piiuisliiiient. The cau- 
tions and hardened sinner may avoid detection, 
and even the consequences of sin in this world, 
while some foolish and ignorant boy may commit 
a single sin, the results of which may blacken 
all his life and blast all his prospects. I have 
met with such a case myself, and all I can say is 
that if that sin deserved so awful a punishment, the 
punishment in store for cold-blooded, deliberate, 
and prudent sinneis must be something too terrible 
to contemplate. Nature, of course, does not always 
jmnish sin; what she does punish is excess; and 
she punishes the ignorant transgression of her 
laws just as sternly as she punishes a deliberate 
infringement of them; and yet we must believe 
that the law of Nature is a law laid down by God. 
Consider, too, the case I have just cited; the 
wayward boy drifts into sin, and finds his 
life is to' be maimed and overshadowed by the 
consequence of it. He begs and implores God 
for forgiveness. What is the comfort, if he is told 
that God says, " Yes, I forgive you if you repent, 
but you must go through life suffering shame and 
misery for your offence"? Perhaps he has been 
led into sin by more hardened offenders, whom he 
sees living in tranquillity and prosperity, and how 
can he bel ieve in the justice of that ? How, in fact, 
are we to reconcile the truth that God, in Nature, 
punishes some careless single sins, and even some 
trifling neglects so terribly, and yet seems to have 
no wrath for a sinner who is wary and prudent? 



Forgiveness 295 

I think it is a great and a fatal mistake not 
to face a problem like this. It is not the least 
use to jjass it over In the mind, and to lay hold 
of some vaguely comforting assurance. If we act 
thus we are apt, when we are reallv confronted 
with the problem in a concrete form, to find the 
whole of our faith crumbling down about us, and 
leaving us helpless and not certain of anything. 

I think that the only way to meet it is, in the 
first place, not to compare our own case with 
the case of others at all. Our own case is the 
only case of which we know the data and the 
circumstances; and it is rare, I think, to find 
people who, as a matter of fact, feel that they 
have been unjustly treated by God. It is rather 
the other way; and I have often been surprised 
at finding people whom I should have exjjected 
to murmur against the dispensation of God, tran- 
quil, and even grateful for their sufferings, when 
they have seemed to myself unduly severe. 

And, in the second place, we must try with all 
our might to believe that the chastening of God 
is not a cruel or fortuitous chastening, and that 
in all suffering we can find an opportunity of 
gaining something for our souls which we can 
gain in no other way. I do not know anything 
which I have more certainly derived from observa- 
tion and experience than the amazing benefits, 
not only in character but also in actual happiness, 
which suffering brings to people. The patience, 
the courage, the sympathy which spring from it I 



296 Along the Road 

And then, too, the soul has a most blessed power 
of obliterating even the recollection of past suf- 
fering, as if it had never been. One looks back 
to a time which was full of anxiety and even 
pain, and can remember nothing of it but the 
joyful and beautiful things. 

And thus we must hold on fast to the fact that 
God's forgiveness is a very real thing, and not a 
mere dramatic thing; and that if we have to 
suffer what seems a disproportionate penalty for 
our fault, it is not sent us because God is merely 
an inflexible exactor of debts, but because by ex- 
acting them He gives us something that we could 
in no other way attain to. 

Where we go wrong is in comparing God to a 
human disciplinarian. If a father says to a son, 
" I forgive you, but I am going to punish you 
just the same," we may frankly conclude that he 
does not know what forgiveness means. The fact 
that he jjunishes merely means that he does not 
really trust the son's repentance, but is going 
to make sure that the son's repentance is not 
merely a plea for remission. We have to act so, 
or we believe that we have to act so, on occasions, 
to other human beings; but it is only because we 
cannot really read their hearts. If we knew that 
a repentance was complete and sincere, we should 
not need to exact any punishment at all. But 
Avith God there can be no such concealments. If 
a man repents of a sin and puts it away from 
him, and if none of the dreaded consequences do 



Forgiveness 297 

befall him, he may be grateful indeed for a gra- 
cious forgiveness. But if the consequences do 
fall on him, he may inquire of himself whether 
his repentance had indeed been sincere, or only 
a mere dread of contingencies; while if he is 
penalised, however hardly, he may believe that his 
sufferings will bring him a blessing, and that by 
no other road can he reach peace. 

What is hardest of all to face is when the sin 
of a careless father or mother seems visited upon 
an innocent child. That does indeed seem a thing 
behind and beyond all human conceptions of jus- 
tice. But it would not be so if we could look 
upon suffering as a gift of God. We must indeed 
use all human skill and knowledge to abate and 
remove remediable suffering, or else we can be 
landed in sad sophistries, and even think our- 
selves justified in inflicting suffering on others 
because of its beneficial results. 

And the last mistake we make is that though 
we most of us profess a faith in immortality, we 
do not really believe it. We confine our ideas of 
the justice of God to the tiny brief span of human 
existence. If we could only realise that it is all 
a much larger and wider and more remote matter, 
we should take our difficulties and troubles 
much more tranquilly and serenely, and learn to 
wait. 

And for practical action, we must, if we would 
be like God, forgive frankly and completely. If 
we act as though we believed in the entire sin- 



298 Along the Road 

cei'ity of a man's repentance, we do more for him 
and for ourselves, even if we are disappointed a 
dozen times, than if we say we will make sure, 
and. exact our due. That is not the forgiveness 
of Christ at all. We must not say, " I have for- 
given you a dozen times, and each time you have 
offended again; this time I can trust you no 
more." We must rather bring ourselves to say, 
" I have been disappointed a dozen times, but this 
time I trust your repentance." It may be said 
that this is mere weak sentiment, but it is w^holly 
false and base to describe it so. It may be foolish- 
ness to the world, but it is the power which wins 
souls. I do not mean that it must be done with- 
out any common sense and wisdom; but even when 
it is so done, it is a nobler and a purer thing 
than a suspicious mistrust. The considerations 
that we ought to punish for the sake of example 
and deterrence, that the offender will be better 
for punishment, and so forth, must be very care- 
fully and sincerely scrutinised, that we may be 
quite sure that our owm personal vindictiveness 
is not dressing itself up in specious reasons. I 
remember well at school being punished for some 
infraction of discipline by a master who dis- 
claimed all sense of personal offence, but who was 
yet, I felt sure, glad to punish because he was 
revenging himself on me for his own sense of 
injured annoyance. It gave me a feeling of real 
humbug when he said that it gave him pain to 
inflict punishment. That I knew was not true. 



Forgiveness 299 

and I ended bv feeling that older people were not 
trustworthy in such matters. 

And thus, if we make up our mind to punish 
and to exact our due, where we can, we had 
better not talk much about forgiveness. The two 
can hardly be brought together. The best way of 
forgiving is often enough to forget, or at all events 
to behave as if we had forgotten ; and perhaps the 
largest and sweetest solution of all is to act in 
the spirit of the old French proverb, which says, 
" To love is to pardon everything.'^ 



SELF-PITY 

We all know the story of Narcissus who caught 
a sight of his own face in a woodside well, where 
he had stooped to drink, and who was so much 
enchanted by his own beauty that he spent the 
rest of his perhaps fortunately brief life in ad- 
miring it. A parable of complacent vanity I But 
it has been left to our self-conscious age to invent 
a still more ingenious form of self-adoration. It 
is not only now the Pharisee wlio is in love with 
liis own nobleness ; but the publican is intoxicated 
with his own humility and abjectness. This is 
very different from the elaborate sorrows of a 
mediaeval penitent, like the Abbot Turgesius of 
Kirkstall, whose grief over his sense of sinfulness 
seems to us exaggerated. " His compunction,'^ 
says the old Chronicle, " knew no bounds. In 
common conversation he scarcely refrained from 
weeping. At the altar he never celebrated with- 
out such a profusion of tears that his eyes might 
be said to rain rather than to weep, insomuch 
that scarcely any other person could use the 
sacerdotal vestments after him." What wonder 
if, after nine years of this lachrymose rule, the 
300 



Self-Pity 301 

poor monks of Kirkstall felt that they wanted a 
man of business at their head ! 

But, after all, the tears of Turgesius did corre- 
spond, I suppose, to a sense that he fell far short 
of his ideal. There is a much more subtle kind 
of lamentation nowadays. I will not go so far 
as to say that our modern development of the 
art of self-pity is a common thing exactly, but 
there is a good deal of it about, and the essence 
of it is a kind of complacent misery, a sense of 
superiority and distinction at having more and 
graver troubles than other people, and a greater 
sensitiveness about them. I remember meeting 
with it once in the case of an old lady, who died 
years ago, whom I used to know. She had a 
good many troubles, and I suppose that the 
method she chose of meeting them was an in- 
stinctive effort of the mind to relieve itself. She 
could not forget them or remove them, and so she 
took the line of being intensely proud of them. 
She could not hear of a disaster without saying 
that it was nothing to what she had to bear. She 
did not seclude herself in melancholy reserve; she 
was rather fond indeed of society, and liked 
nothing better, when she saw that all were en- 
joying themselves, than to burst into tears and 
say that it reminded her of all she had lost. She 
was, or had been, a tender-hearted woman, but 
I do not think she ever enjoyed herself more than 
when she sat down to write a letter of condolence 
to some bereaved person. This parade of grief 



302 Along the Road 

used then to afflict me, but T know now — and I 
say this not at all cynically, but with perfect 
candour — that it was her way of turning the 
tables on her sorrows, and that she got as much 
interest out of the little drama as other people 
get out of other poses. She thought herself a 
romantic and interesting figure, oyershadowed by 
a mysterious and impressive affliction. What she 
did not perceive was that strangers who met her 
thought her dismal, and that her own immediate 
circle found her partly tiresome and partly 
grotesque. 

Of course, the truth is that the condition of 
self-pity is a morbid one, and that a person suf- 
fering under it is as much worthy of pity as 
anyone who is afflicted with any other disagree- 
able complaint. It is like shyness — it is not the 
least use to laugh at shy people and tell them 
that it all comes of thinking about themselves; 
that is the disease itself. Shyness is a very un- 
pleasant and hampering malady, but no one de- 
liberately makes up his mind to be shy. The only 
cure for shy people is to encourage them to take 
an interest in external things, to use other parts 
of their brain, because when we know more of 
mental and moral physiology we shall find, no 
doubt, that shjmess means some disarrangement 
of brain molecules, some unsheathed nerve, which 
prevents a man or woman from acting simply 
and confidently, as healthy people act. 

Self-pity is really nothing more than ordinary 



Self-Pity 303 

vauity turned inside out. The vain person, what- 
ever he hears or sees, is bent on favourable com 
parison of himself with others. A man who is 
vain of his appearance is pleased to find himself 
among deplorable-looking people; and if he has 
an uneasy suspicion that some one is handsomer 
than himself, delights to say that beauty does 
not depend upon correctness of feature, but upon 
expression. So, too, the self-pitying man is occu- 
pied in always measuring other troubles against 
his own, and if the trouble of another is obviously 
greater, he falls back upon the superiority of his 
own sensibilities. 

T think that the complaint is more common 
among women than among men, though when a 
man has it it is generally very bad indeed, be- 
cause men are generally more positive than 
women. I remember an old gentleman who was 
fond of appearing at his own dinner-table with 
an air of mournful resignation, and helping the 
rest of the party to soup, but waging away the 
proffer of a plate for himself. Then there arose 
a chorus of condolence from the female members 
of his party, to which he gravely replied that he 
hoped no notice would be taken of him, that he 
had no appetite for dinner, but that he pre- 
ferred to keep his anxieties to himself. Then 
he was coaxed and implored to make an effort 
for their sake; until with an air of infinite 
magnanimity he helped himself to soup, and 
generally ended by making a remarkably good 



304 Along the Road 

dinner, due tribute having been paid to his 
sensibilities. 

But the reason why, as a rule, men are less 
liable to the disease than women is simply because 
as a rule they have more to do, are compelled to 
go out to business, to meet other people, and so 
are insensibly drawn out of themselves. But 
lonely w^omen or feminine households, with few 
visitors and scanty external interests, with little 
to do except to pass the hours between meals, and 
plenty of time for brooding, are apt to fall a prey 
to these fancies; and especially does it happen in 
the case of bereavements, where true affection dic- 
tates a false loyalty to the dead, and where pro- 
longed grief seems to be the obvious proof of 
faithful love. But as Mrs. Charles Kingsley once 
said to a friend, with splendid emphasis: " When- 
ever I find myself thinking too much of Charles, 
T read the most sensational story I can find. 
Hearts were made to love with, not to break!" 
That is a true and a gallant saying! 

But if anyone can once realise that this kind 
of morbid sensibility is a disease, the cure is 
possible, though difficult. It is of little use to 
analyse an illness, unless one is prepared with 
some suggestion as to its remedy. The remedy 
in this case is at all costs to find an interest, oi* 
at worst, a duty. Tf a person in this condition 
takes u]) a definite piece of work, and if possible 
a piece of woik which involves relations with 
other people, and pledges himself or herself to it 



Self-Pity 305 

in a way that makes one ashamed of neglecting 
it, the disease may be fought and conquered. It 
is a medicine, and often a very disagreeable medi- 
cine. Those involved in the luxury of grief think 
that allowances should be made for them, that 
they are not equal to action, that they can be 
of no use. Let them try! Let a woman, for in- 
stance, take up a perfectly definite piece of work, 
the more congenial, of course, the better, if it be 
only the anxious care of some one other human 
being. In every smallest village there is some 
one who can be watched and tended; and then 
human relations have a marvellous way of broad- 
ening and extending; the flame leaps from one 
point to another; and thus the thing becomes 
dear and desirable; or even if it does not, thei-e 
is always a pleasure in carrying a matter through, 
in following out a programme. 

Of couise, people in real and great affliction 
cannot always be hurried. But the time often 
comes, as every doctor knows, when a strain or 
a lesion is healed, but the habit of lameness or 
incapacity continues. I was told an interesting 
story the other day of an old Canon of a cathedral 
who sank into great depression and could per- 
form none of his duties. He sat day by day try- 
ing to read or write, lost in melancholy. The 
months went on, and his doctor became aware, 
from certain unmistakable signs, that the attack 
was over, and jet it seemed impossible to rouse 
him. One morning a messenger came in to say 



3o6 Along the Road 

that the only other Canon in residence had been 
suddenly taken ill, and that there was no one 
to preside at the service. The old man got up 
from his chair, said, " I think I can manage it," 
put on his surplice and went in, and to his amaze- 
ment found that he could take his part in the 
service with enjoyment; from that moment he was 
restored to health and activity. 

This is the truth which underlies Christian 
Science, that we can most of us endure and do 
more than we feel we can; and there is nothing 
so potent in dispersing nervous terrors as to 
drag oneself to the scene of action, expecting 
to break down, the result being in nine cases 
out of ten that what breaks down is the nervous 
terror. 

It is not wrong to be attacked by self-pity any 
more than it is wrong to have a cold in the head 
— both are the result of some sort of disorganisa- 
tion of the frame. What is wrong, in both cases, 
is to allow oneself to be incapacitated by it. 
What would help many people out of the self- 
pitying condition would be to realise how ugly 
and ill-mannered and boring a thing it may be- 
come. A display of tragic grief at a moment of 
mental agony is a very impressive thing; but one 
cannot be harassed beyond a certain point; and 
the complacent display of artificial misery is as 
objectionable a thing in the moral world as is 
the habit of incessant sniffing is in the physical 
region. It may be very comfortable to sniff if 



Self-Pity 307 

one feels iiicliiied ; but what SDiffers do not realise 
is that, instead of evoking sympathy, they evoke 
nothing bnt a sort of contemptuous irritation in 
othei's. Christ advised people who were temi)ted 
to paiade their prayerfulness in public, to go 
home and shut the door; the same applies to 
genuine grief, and far more to indulged grief. 
Of course no one who has had much experience 
thinks that the world is a wholly easy or com- 
fortable place; but by indulging self-pity, one 
lessens rather than increases one's capacity for 
endurance. A century ago it was the fashion for 
a certain type of woman to faint as much as 
possible in public, and a power of unlimited 
swooning was a matter of pardonable pride. But 
when it became clear that other people were 
frankly bored by having to attend to rigid females, 
the tendency died out, to reappear in subtler 
forms. To indulge self-pity is not only an ab- 
negation of courage; it is an insult to the great, 
interesting, exciting world. If life means any- 
thing, it means that we have the chance of a 
certain amount of experience, and a certain 
length of road to cover if we will. But if we 
take our seat by the roadside, our face covered 
by our hands, shaking with sobs, to excite the 
interest and sympathy of other pilgrims, we run 
the risk of delaying too long, and at last, when 
we uncover our besmeared countenance, we shall 
find that the pilgrims are out of sight, and shall 
have to trot after them in the twilight in a very 



3o8 Along the Road 

helpless and humiliatiug fashion, when we might 
have walked in true company, and had the pleas- 
ure of honest talk and pretty prospects by the 
way. 



BELLS 

When we were living at Lincoln, now nearly 
forty years ago, where my father was a Canon, 
we children had a pleasant custom that when we 
were all at home together, the first day of the 
liolidays, we should borrow my father's pass-key 
to the cathedral, and go to the great bell-chamber 
of the central tower, just before noon, to see and 
hear Great Tom strike the hour. 

We used to convoy the party to the little door 
in the south transept that admitted one to the 
winding stair. How cool it was in there, with 
a pleasant smell of stone, and into what silence 
and darkness it conducted us! Up and up we 
went. Now there was a sudden peep out of a 
loophole on to house-roofs and gardens and sailing 
birds; then there was a long gallery to be 
threaded, in the triforium, with pits of darkness, 
in the upper surface of the aisle vaulting, on 
either hand; then another stair — we were in the 
great tower now. Then a dizzy balustraded gal- 
lery, in the lantern itself, from which we could 
look down into the stacked organ-pipes below and 
see the choir laid out like a map. Then further 
309 



310 Along the Road 

stairs, and at last a key was turned and we were 
in the liigh, dusty chamber itself, with its great 
tie-beams and cross-rods, its litter of jackdaw 
nests, and the golden light filtering in through 
the slanting louvres of the windows. 

The bells themselves lived in a great railed 
cage, into which we could also penetrate; but we 
were getting anxious now, as the hour drew near, 
and the great clock ticked the minutes away. 
Someone would tell the legend of the unhappy 
man who determined to stand inside the bell 
w^hen the hour struck, and fell to the ground 
after the first stroke, with the blood gushing from 
nose and ears — an entire fiction, no doubt! And 
now there was silence. 

There was Great Tom himself, swung on his 
monstrous wheel, on the one side of him a huge 
black hammer for the hour, ou the other side 
another hammer, with a leathern strap round it, 
for ringing a muflled peal if any dignitary of the 
church died. A little beyond were the two bells 
for the quarter chimes, big enough, but as nothing 
beside the bulk of Tom. Then perhaps a nervous 
sister's heart would fail her, and she would seek 
the shelter of the staircase. At last the watches 
pointed to noon ; suddenly came a click. Pulled 
by some mysterious agency, one of the hammers 
of the small bells was jerked backwards, poised, 
and fell with a crash, the others following suit. 
That was deafening enough, and it was four times 
repeated. Then came an awful pause, while the 



Bells 311 

echoes died away. Great Tom was very deliberate 
and took his time about striking. It was almost 
more than mortal nature could bear to await the 
moment; but at last the great hammer quivered, 
was agitated, drew itself back, and then fell with 
a tremendous sliock and an outrushing wave of 
sweet sound. Sometimes one fled before it; but 
it was worse in the staircase, where the' echoes 
came and went like resounding waves; and I 
grew to think that the clash of the small bells 
was more terrifying than the solemn thunder of 
Tom himself. 

How often, too, in the little mullioned bedroom 
of the Chancery, which I occupied with my 
brother, looking out on Minster Green, at some 
dead hour of a gusty night, used we to hear the 
solemn shout of the great bell come swinging over 
the house-roofs ! 

I do not think there is anything which so iden- 
tifies itself with the spirit and memory of a place 
as the sound of some customary bell! At Eton, 
the great, school clock has a strange cracked 
quality, I know not how produced, which it is 
almost impossible to identify on a piano. How 
well I remember the first bewildered night I spent 
there as a small boy, with all the vague terrors 
of the unfamiliar place upon me, and how the 
great bell, not so far away, clashed out the hour 
of dawn, when one had to bestir oneself and 
plunge into the whirling tide of new faces and 
mystifying duties I I little thought, when I heard 



312 Along the Road 

it then, for how many years of my life there, as 
boy and master, it would tell the happy and the 
busy hours, or with what inexpressible emotion 
I should hear it beat out the last hour of my 
life of service there! 

What poignant feelings, too, are aroused by a 
cheerful peal of distant church bells floating melo- 
diously on a spring morning over green woods 
and blossoming valleys! It is very hard to ana- 
lyse such vague reveries as they arouse — a half- 
recovered freshness, a surprising joy; like the 
notes of the cuckoo, they transport one back as 
by a charm into the old unreflecting childish 
mood, when life was all full of new experience 
and joyful energy; or the sound of bells clashing 
out above, as the wedding procession comes out 
to the porch, with the organ humming within ; 
or when the solemn tower takes voice, in some 
moment of lonely waning light, and beats out the 
news of the departure of a spirit voyaging to 
the unknown; or when it beats, at slow and re- 
luctant intervals, as the funeral pomp draws 
deliberately nigh. 

One of the many charms of Cambridge is that 
it is a city of many bells; there is the beautiful 
familiar chime of St. Mary's, and at night the 
curfew is still rung there, by kindly custom, to 
guide belated travellers home across the fen. The 
bells of King's College are not solemn enough, 
though endeared to me by use; the chapel bell 
is not serious enough for the occasion, and the 



Bells 313 

clock there utters a trivial and even waspish 
note. Trinity has a new and very stately chime; 
and then there are innumerable other voices of 
stricken metal, in towers and belfries, down to 
Ihe gi'eat chime of the new Roman Catholic 
Church, which plays a strict old ecclesiastical 
melody, hard to recapture, at every quarter. Yet 
how often the day passes, and one is not even 
conscious of having heard a bell, much less of 
having been disturbed by one; for the brain has 
a singular power of taking no notice whatever 
of a familiar sound and a recurring note, so long 
as it has nothing of human unaccountableness, of 
irregular volition, behind it. 

The voices of bells certainly belong to the peace- 
ful sounds of life, and mingle themselves with the 
characteristic atmosphere and quality of a place 
and a life. And then, as I say, they have the 
magical power, when heard after a long interval, 
of suddenly touching with vividness and recon- 
structing the old sense of a forgotten hour : 

" The times when I remember to have been 
Joyful and free from blame." 

One of my great pleasures at my little college 
here is that I have lately been permitted to hang 
in The quaint hall belfry a bell, of a soft and 
silvery note, on which the clock now strikes the 
liour; and two lesser bells for the quarters, 
the three to sound the subject of that wonderful 



314 Along the Road 

Prelude of Raclimaniiioff's. which will be familiar 
to all who go to St. Paul's Cathedral, where it 
is sometimes played. 

What I like about it is the thought that the 
three bells will, it may be hoped, become a part 
of the memory of the place. Up till now there has 
been a shrill, light-minded bell, which has had 
neither dignity nor resonance, a mere time-teller. 
But it is a pleasure to think that the new bells 
may weave themselves into the delights and ac- 
tivities and dreams of the generations who will 
hereafter go in and out; and that coming back 
a score of years after, the sound of the familiar 
chime may bring back sudden retrospects of the 
little vivid court full of sunlight, the voices of 
forgotten friends, the old plans and designs, the 
old energies and brightnesses of the unshadowed 
life. One cannot live in retrospect; but however 
strongly the new tide of activities may run — and 
as life goes on, the tide does run more swift and 
more absorbing — it is good to be recalled in spirit 
to the earlier days, that we may see how far our 
hopes have fulfilled themselves, and whether or 
no we have been true to our purposes. This is 
not a mere sentiment; it is facing life largel}' 
and fully, and let us hope gratefully; and only 
thus does one draw near to the secret and the 
mystery of it all, realise its significance, and even 
discern that it is but a prelude to the greatness 
as vet unrevealed. 



STARLINGS 

I SPENT some time to-day watching an innumer- 
able colony of starlings, who were picking over 
a field where some sheep were penned. The star- 
ling as a bird is an interesting study; he has a 
very prettily marked coat, with all sorts of un- 
expected gleams and glooms and iridescences in 
it. He suits his colours to the day. On a grey, 
dull morning, the starling is habited in decent 
pepper and salt, like a respectable farmer; on a 
day of sunlight, he has the changeful sheen of 
the dove, the radiance of the rainbow, the broken 
lights of spilt petrol! Then his bill is so sharp 
and long, and used so vigorously, that it is a 
pleasure to see him at work. He never takes any- 
thing quietly or tranquilly. He is always in 
superlatives. He is for ever in a tremendous 
hurry and fuss, frightfully hungry, desperately 
busy. He goes about as if he were catching a 
train. He eats as if it were his first meal for 
weeks, and his last chance of food for a month. 
And then he is a most dramatic bird. If you 
throw crumbs out on a lawn, the robin arrives 
first in a disengaged fashion, hops about admiring 

315 



3i6 Along the Road 

the view, and finally decides he may as well have 
a mouthful. Then the sparrows bustle down, and 
gobble away in a jolly, vulgar fashion. Then the 
finches alight in a gentlemanly way, and pick up 
their food courteously and daintily. Suddenly 
there is a flutter of wings, and a starling or two 
descend out of breath, in wild terror and excite- 
ment, as if they had to choose between a violent 
death and death by starvation, and they had de- 
cided to risk the former. They snatch up all 
they can, and fly in furious haste. 

When they roost, they are apparently only 
afraid of being bored. They chirp all together 
like Italian canons saying vespers against time; 
and the moment they aw^ake they begin to practise 
all kinds of quaint imitation of sounds they have 
heard. Life is a very strenuous business with 
them. 

Some years ago I spent a winter in Scotland 
at a shooting lodge. The starlings had taken a 
fancy to roost in a little island on a lake, which 
was overgrown with thickets of rhododendrons. 
They used to begin to assemble about four o'clock 
as the day began to fade. Those that arrived 
first used to fly round and round in a circle over 
their roosting- place, and all the newcomers joined 
them in their airy dance. As the sun set, one 
used to see troops arriving from every direction, 
until at last there was a dense mass of birds all 
on the wing, flying round and round over the 
island. From a mile away one could see the mass 



Starlings 317 

like a great shifting, shadowy balloon, now densely 
I)acked, now bursting out at the top or the side 
like a waving flag. At last, when the muster was 
complete, at some given signal, they sank silently 
on to the island. A minute or two were spent 
in finding their perches, and then arose a wild 
din, a sort of evening hymn, every starling shriek- 
ing its loudest. After a few minutes again, as 
though by a signal, the noise suddenly stopped, 
not gradually, but like steam shut sharply off. 
Then, if one came close up and clapped one's 
hands, the whole company opened cry, and the 
great mass shot up into the air with a roar, to 
resume their evolutions, sinking down to roost as 
soon as the coast was clear. 

To-day, as I watched them, I saw that while 
there were hundreds on the ground making a 
thorough investigation of the field, several trees 
close by were crammed with birds, and humming 
like gigantic tea-kettles. I crept up to the hedge 
to watch them, and they continued to feed for 
some time, but suddenly one of them scented 
danger. As if at a word of command, the whole 
company, several hundred in number, rose into 
the air; all those in the trees swooped out to 
join them; and the whole mass flew over the 
adjoining hedge to continue foraging on a safer 
fallow. 

Now this signal that is given is probably clear 
enough to the birds. But what entirely beats me 
is how they manage their evolutions. They fly at 



31 8 Along the Road 

a prodigious pace in open order, they all keep 
tbeir distances, there is never the least sign of 
any collision. The method is ])erfectly incompre- 
hensible. It is impossible to divine who settles 
the pace or the direction. Yet the whole rout 
will execute a si mnl tan eons wheel when on the 
wing without the smallest sign of confusion or 
of dislocation. It is all very well to say it is 
instinctive, though I suppose that a young stai*- 
ling when he joins the territorial force finds 
these evolutions perfectly easy. But the whole 
thing implies an extraordinary number of mental 
processes, quick observation, rapid inference, in- 
stantaneous calculation, and the most complete 
subordination to some sort of guidance. It is 
impossible to see whether any particular birds 
take the lead; it does not seem so, because, as 
the great company settles in a field, the birds in 
the rear, when the leaders begin to pitch, fly- over 
their heads and settle too in w^hat must be a 
perfectly definite and preconcerted order. And 
if one puts up the birds again, those in front, 
which have a minute or two before been in the 
rear, rise up and seem to take the lead. The 
whole thing is, in fact, a most complete and 
organised system of drill of a very delicate kind. 
I once saw a mass of starlings in full flight sud- 
denly confronted, as they came over a hedge, by 
a boy who emerged from behind a haystack. 
They were close upon liim when they perceived 
him. One would have imagined that there would 



Starlings 319 

have been some confusion owing to the sudden 
check; but instead of this, the whole flight went 
up straight into the air, keeping their places 
exactly. 

I remember once, when I was a schoolmaster, 
having to preside over the evolutions of a big 
company of small boys, and the desperate diffi- 
culty that there was, in spite of their extreme 
willingness to manoeuvre, and their anxiety to 
perform the process right, to get them to do any- 
thing of the sort with an}^ precision. They simply 
could not keep their distances. If the front line 
was suddenly checked, the back line rushed into 
it, while if am-thing in the least complicated was 
attempted, the whole body were in confusion at 
once. Yet the boys understood perfectly well 
what was wanted of them, and presumably had 
as much intelligence as the starlings. 

That is the extraordinary thing about animals, 
that their reasoning processes seem so extraor- 
dinarily perfect within certain limits, and so very 
helpless in other directions. They take an im- 
mense time to acquire new instincts, and yet, on 
the other hand, they seem very quick at picking 
up new ideas. Partridges, for instance, have 
learned not to fear a railway train passing. You 
will see them in fields beside a line, sitting per- 
fectly still close to the roaring train. They seem 
to have learned that no danger threatens them, 
and the result is that they are absolutely uncon- 
cerned. Y^et the same birds will fly backwards 



320 Along the Road 

and forwards over shooting-butts, season after 
season, and never learn that there is anything 
dangerous to be avoided. Even a bird which has 
been wounded at a butt will fly with the covey 
a week or two afterwards over the same butt. I 
suppose that in the course of time they will learn 
to differentiate between the beaters and the guns. 
T>ut it is very strange that their reasoning pro- 
cesses are so incomplete, while their instincts are 
so remarkably delicate and skilful. 

I remember once watching a hen to whom had 
been confided a big brood of partridge-chicks. She 
was intensely solicitous about them, and furious 
if one came too near the coop. The little crea- 
tures themselves recognised her as their mother, 
and fled to lier for safety. Yet in a week she 
had killed them all by treading upon them; 
and, indeed, I saw her crush one to death in 
the endeavour to protect it from my dangerous 
proximity ! 

But the commonwealth of starlings is produc- 
tive of still more interesting reflections. They 
are extremely quarrelsome and selfish birds. If 
one of them finds food, a dozen will rush in and 
tear it away. They have not the slightest res])ect 
for each other^s rights; and yet with all their 
individualism they are the most entirely gre- 
garious of birds. Their sense of the community 
and their desire for each other's company is quite 
irrepressible. They have a strong idea of im- 
perial federation, and their subordination to some 



Starlings 321 

kind of leadership must be complete. Yet they 
seem to be entirely lawless among themselves, to 
be at perpetual enmity with each other. 

I suppose that this is the sort of community 
which may be the outcome of Socialistic prin- 
ciples, if the wrong type of person gets the direc- 
tion of the movement. The starlings in their way 
are a very satisfactory kind of community. They 
are healthy, sensible, greedy, and strong. None 
of them ever seem out of sorts or out of spirits. 
Tf a weak starling has a tit-bit taken away from 
him by a strong one, he does not w^aste time in 
brooding, or impugning the justice of existence. 
He hurries away to find another morsel. Then, 
too, their intuitive subordination is complete. 
They do not seem to be conscious of the pressure 
of social problems. They are on a splendid level 
of common sense and activity. It is true that 
they are a thoroughly bourgeois type. One can- 
not imagine a starling singing under the moon, 
in a fine rapture, like the nightingale. They work 
hard for their lining, and when they are at leisure, 
as in the early morning, they amuse themselves 
by impudent imitations of things in general, like 
healthy people who work all day and find amuse- 
ment in the evening in the club and the music- 
hall. They are eminently courageous and humor- 
ous; but the lark and the nightingale, solitary 
souls, have a certain secret joy in the beauty of 
life, which one cannot imagine the starling shar- 
ing. They no doubt consider the lark a fool for 



322 Along the Road 

spending his time and strength in singing and 
soaring, and as for the nightingale, they would 
no doubt despise a bird which wasted time that 
might be devoted to refreshing sleep in ecstasies 
about the moon and the garden-scents. 

I am not wholly on the side of the starling. 
Their life is very well organised, very busy, very 
sensible. They combine in a remarkable way a 
devotion to their own interests with a sense of 
civic duty. I admire their admirable evolutions, 
and envy their entire disregard of any kind of 
privacy. But the starling is only a jolly school- 
boy when all is said and done. He obeys orders, 
he enjoys his food. He is not so dreadfully busi- 
ness-like as the bee, nor so helplessly gregarious 
as the barnacle; but he is a conventional wretch 
for all that, and I should be sorry if humanity 
developed on his good-humoured lines. 



MOTTOES 

m 

I HAD occasion the other day to attempt to iden- 
tify an unnamed portrait. There was nothing to 
help me but the motto, " Patior ut potiar^'; ^' I 
suffer that I may obtain." I turned over an im- 
mense number of heraldic mottoes in search of 
it. The Peyton family bears the motto, '' Patior, 
potior": "1 suffer, I obtain." It ultimately 
turned out to be the motto of the Spottiswoodes. 
I was struck, I confess, on passing in review 
several hundred mottoes, to find how flat they 
generally are. They are very often platitudes of 
the deepest dye, and have nothing salient or dis- 
tinctive about them. But they cast a curious 
light on the English character. It never occurred 
to me before what a very real and vital test of 
our national motives and temperament such a 
collection of maxims supplies, but, if one thinks 
of it, a man who is going to take a motto pro- 
bably makes some attempt to sum up in it his 
experience of life, or at all events, if mottoes are 
suggested to him, he is not likely to adopt one 
which does not seem to him to represent his own 
philosophy. Kow in studying these mottoes of 
323 



324 Along the Road 

great English families, I was struck with several 
things. They dwell very much upon virtue as 
the basis of success, a good deal upon honour, 
and upon being true to one's word. Many of 
them are distinctly religious and Christian; the 
cross of Christ is not infrequently named iu 
them, generally in cases where the chief of the 
bearings is a cross. But they are not, as a rule, 
idealistic or imaginative or poetical or suggestive ; 
they are sensible and straightforward and rather 
materialistic. They take many of them very de- 
cided views of the sanctity of property. Thus 
Lord Zouche's motto is, " Let Curzon hold what 
Curzon held." The motto of the Riddell family 
is, " I hope to share." The De Tabley motto is 
'' Tenel)o/' " I will retain." The Denny family 
bears ^^Et mea messis erif/' "And the harvest shall 
be mine " ; w^hile the Ecklin motto is still more 
outspoken — ^^ Nou sine piwda," " Not without the 
spoils." Again, the De Traffords have a fine old 
predatory motto, " Gripe, Grififin, hold fast I " On 
the other hand, the Grevilles bear the motto, '^ Yix 
ea nostra voco/' "I scarce can call it mine"; 
and the Cowpers have the beautiful and solemn 
motto, addressed, I suppose, to God — '' Timm est/' 
" It is Thine." 

Some of the most impressive mottoes are those 
which consist of single words. The Duke of 
Hamilton has the motto " Through " ; Lord Hawke 
has " Strike," — a very appropriate motto for a 
famous batsman ! Lord St. Vincent has the word 



Mottoes 325 

" Thus," which has a very stately air of high- 
bred satisfaction. The Aylmer family bears the 
motto '' Hallelujah," and the Marquis of Ayles- 
])ury has the patlietic word ^'^ Fuimus/' " We have 
been." The last motto is an ill-omened one. I 
suppose the idea was that the annals of the house 
were a part of history; but the Latin word has 
always the signification that a thing is over and 
done with. 

There are many very interesting punning 
mottoes, with a play upon the family name. 
Thus the Wolseleys (Wolves-ley) bear ^^ Homo 
Jiomini Inpns/' " Man is as a wolf to man " — a 
grim maxim. Lord Fairfax bears ^^ Fare jac'^ 
" Speak and act " ; the Monsell family has " Mone 
saJe," which means " If you give advice, do so 
humorously," or *' Warn with wit." The Vernons 
have the motto, ^' Ter non semper mret/^ which 
may mean " Spring is not always green," or 
'' Vernon always flourishes." The Beauchamps 
bear ^^ Fortuna mea in hello campo/' " The lot 
is fallen unto me in a fair ground " — the heau 
champ of the name. The Fortescues have ^^ Forte 
scutum salus ducum/^ "The strong shield is the 
captains^ safety." The Doyles have a very curi- 
ous motto, "Doe noe yle (ill) quoth Do-yle"; 
but the most ingenious of all is the Onslow motto, 
^^ Festina lente/' which means " Make haste 
slowly," or " On slow." The Cavendish family 
has the solid maxim, " Cavendo Tutus/' " Safe by 
being cautious." 



326 Along the Road 

Perliaps one of tlie most curious of all mottoes 
is that borne by Lord Erskine, no doubt invented 
by the first peer, tlie witty and fanciful Lord 
Chancellor, " Trial by Jury." The Dashwoods 
have the constitutional motto, " Pro Magna 
Charta/' '' For Magna Charta." 

Then there are a number of fanciful and often 
very beautiful mottoes. The Egertons have ^^ Sic 
Donee" — "Even thus, until-' — which is a fine 
aposiopesis. Lord Gough bears the splendid 
motto, referring to his great victory, " Goojerat, 
clear the way." I supi)ose that this refers to 
some celebrated order given by him on the occa- 
sion. Then there is '' Comme je trouve," which 
is parallel to '' Si je puis'' which last was 
adopted by William Morris. The Anstruthers 
have '^ Periissem nisi periissem," which, I sup- 
I)ose, means, " I should have perished if I had 
not persevered," or it may be that it signifies, 
" I should have lost my life if I had not lost it." 
Lord Halifax bears the contented motto, " T 
like my choice." The Maxwells have the pretty 
maxim, " Think on " ; and the Montefiores the 
still more beautiful one, " Think and Thank." 
The Byrons have the grand war-cry, ^' Crede 
Byron/' " Trust Byron." The Yarde-Bullers have 
the curious phrase, '^ Aquila non capit miiscas/' 
" The eagle does not catch flies " ; the De Bathes 
have the rather cynical phrase, "Nee parvis 
sisto," which seems to mean, " I don't stick at 
trifles." The Ousel eys have a very curious motto, 



Mottoes 327 

^' Mors lupi agnis vita/' " The death of the wolf 
is life to the lambs." The Peeks bear the beauti- 
ful words, ^' Le maitre vierit/' " The Master 
cometh." Lord Deramore has ^^ Node volamus/' 
a reference to the bats' wings on his arms. Lord 
Donington has the pathetic motto, ^'^ Tenehras 
meas/' which perhaps means " Lighten our dark- 
ness." The Buncombes bear ^^ Non fecimus ipsi/' 
" We did not achieve it of ourselves." The Ayles- 
fords bear the beautiful motto, very hard to trans- 
late, ^' Aperto vivere voto," which means " To live 
in all sincerity." The Duke of Marlborough has, 
I think, a Spanish motto, which means " Faithful 
though disgraced." Lord Carlisle has the very 
pathetic motto, '^ Yolo non valeo," " I desire but 
I cannot perform." The Cadogans carry ^^ Qui 
invidet inferior est/' ^' He that envies is the lesser 
man." 

Of the Christian mottoes which I mentioned, 
Lord Basing bears a Greek motto, which language 
is rarel}^ used, "st ^y] Iv tw aTaupw" — Save in the 
Cross," — the words, " God forbid that I should 
glory," being understood. The Lechmeres have 
the singular phrase, '^ Christus pelicano/' " Christ 
in the pelican," with reference to the old tradition 
of the pelican feeding her young with her own 
blood. Lord Clarendon has the strange motto, 
^^ Fidel coticula crux/' '^ The Cross is the test of 
faith " — coticula meaning a stone used for testing 
metals. 

Enough has, I hope, been said to show the 



328 Along the Road 

interest and suggestiveness of these pretty sum- 
maries of life and hope. I do not attach too 
much importance to them, but I should value the 
possession of a fine mysterious old family motto, 
which one could hold on to in one's heart as a 
comfort in perplexity and as a sort of battle-cry 
when efi'ort was needed. My father used as a 
young man to bear the beautiful motto, ^' Luce 
Magisfra/' "With light as my guide"; but when 
he became Bishop of Truro he took out a new 
patent of arms, because there seemed some doubt 
as to his right to the arms he bore, and he then 
went back to a fine old French family motto, 
^^ Fay hien crain rien" which I have carried about 
with me engraved on a gold ring for so many 
years that it is now nearly obliterated. It is an 
inspiring thing, T believe, to have a great, wise, 
encouraging maxim to which one succeeds by in- 
heritance, and by which one can try to regulate 
one's conduct. That may be a feeling apart from 
common sense, but the mind and heart are much 
affected by these symbols of great truths, which 
can consecrate one's hopes in the old knightly 
fashion. The truth is that sentiment does play 
a far larger part in the world than we are most 
of us willing to admit. A great many men and 
women are sustained in life by a vague sense of 
the superiority of their famil}^ traditions to the 
traditions of other families. They would dis- 
claim this if they were directly taxed with it, 
but the fact remains that they secretly believe 



Mottoes 329 

that their ways of doiug things, their dress, their 
deportment, their recipes, their furniture, indicate 
a self-respect which the arrangements of others 
do not so clearly bespeak. And thus, though 
family pride may be a limited and unsympathetic 
affair, yet it is really a very active force in the 
vrorld, and leads people to act, from a prin- 
ciple of noWesse ohlige, in a way which on the 
whole encourages dignity and decorum. We are 
swayed more by instinct than by reason in 
the affairs of life, and happily for us the reason 
which would in public discount, let us say, the 
sentiment of a family motto as a bit of unneces- 
sary emotion, is overcome by the instinct which 
leads us to feel that our family traditions expect 
a certain nobility of action from us, and to con- 
demn ourselves in secret, if we have fallen short 
of the standards in which we have been nurtured. 



ON BEING INTERRUPTED 

I SUPPOSE that for busy people there are few 
of the minor ills of life that are so hard to 
bear philosophically as unnecessary interrup- 
tions. Here is a case in point. Some little time 
aji:o, I had secured, I thought, one evening, a 
couple of hours to finish off a bit of work which 
had to be done by a certain time. I had just 
got into the swing of it, when a man whom I 
know only slightly sent in his name, asking if 
he might speak to me for a moment. I had been 
in correspondence with him about fixing the date 
of an engagement some weeks ahead. I had sug- 
gested three possible dates, and all that he had 
to do was to select one. He came in with a 
leisurely air, said that he happened to be passing 
through Cambridge, and thought it would be so 
much more satisfactoi-y to see me. " It is so 
much easier," he said, with a genial smile, " to 
settle these things at an interview/' He then 
produced my letter, and gave me, at much lengtli, 
a number of excellent reasons against two of the 
dates I had proposed. I said that it was all 
the same to me, so we would fix the third of the 
330 



On Being Interrupted 331 

dates. He then said that he was very much in- 
terested in the matter that was going to be dis- 
cussed on the occasion, and that he would much 
like to have an opportunity of hearing my views 
on the subject. He then occupied over half an 
hour in giving me his own views on the question, 
which differed from my own; but when I at- 
tempted to meet any of his points he held up his 
hand and said, ^^ Pardon me — I should just like 
to finish my statement of the case; I shall deal 
with that objection in a moment/' So it went on, 
and at the end of about an hour, he said : ^' Well, 
I must not take up your time any longer; I am 
very glad to have had this opportunity of dis- 
cussing the question frankly." Then followed a 
little talk on general topics and a few civilities, 
and he finally took his departure with much 
courtesy. 

It is no doubt unreasonable and ungenial to 
object to this polite kind of brigandage I I feel 
ashamed to reflect how much annoyed I was by 
the invasion. Yet I am sure that the worthy man 
meant well. I have no doubt he thought in a 
general way that he was saving me the trouble 
of writing a letter, and he also wished to have 
the opportunity of airing his views on the par- 
ticular subject. It had not, I am sure, occurred 
to him that a letter could have been written in 
two minutes, or that I might not desire to hear 
what he thought on the question. Yet to put the 
matter in the most concrete and commercial light, 



332 Along the Road 

he was depriving me not only of time, but actually 
of money, by his call. The work I was doing was 
wage-earning woi-k; and this is the disadvantage 
of being a writer, that people are apt to think 
that writing can be done at any time. One would 
not venture to treat a doctor or a lawyer so. 

This particular case is no doubt an extreme 
one, but I do not see how I could have met it. 
It would have been uncivil to refuse to see him, 
and he would have felt himself discourteously used 
if I had said, like Archbishop Laud on a similar 
occasion, when the two gentlemen of Wiltshire 
called upon him, that I had no time for compli- 
ments, and left the room by another door. 

Of course, as a general rule, one must allow 
for a certain inevitable amount of interruption. 
As a college official, I know that, day by day, a 
certain number of points are bound to turn up, 
which involve one's suspending whatever one has 
in hand. One is rung up on the telephone to 
fix an engagement, some one wants to borrow a 
book, a proof comes in to be corrected, a man 
comes in to see about hanging some pictures in 
the library — every one knows the sort of triviali- 
ties. One takes such things as part of the day's 
work, and deals with them as mechanically as 
one opens an umbrella if it comes on to rain. 
But the sort of interruption which one entirely 
grudges are the things which take up time and 
patience and do not seem to have anything to 
justify them. I remember my father, when he 



On Being Interrupted 333 

was Archbislioj), saving that the sort of thing 
lie found so hard to understand the use of, was 
when he spent the greater part of the day in 
travelling to fulfil some social or ceremonial en- 
gagement, '^ when for all the good I did I might 
have been a stuffed seal ! " A day gone in travel- 
ling and in vague civilities, with perhaps an op- 
portunity of making a ten minutes' speech! I 
think that he perhaps naturally underestimated 
the effect that his presence probably had in giv- 
ing a stimulus to the particular enterprise. But 
when, day after day, pressing business has to be 
laid aside, when no leisure can be obtained for 
quiet reading or for thinking out an important 
matter, then it must be difficult for a busy man 
not to say to himself/' " To what purpose is this 
waste?" 

In the case of a man like my father, who 
worked, when left to himself, with an almost 
destructive energy, I have little doubt that these 
distractions were really a blessing, because they 
gave him a compulsory rest. But there is a 
further point which is worth considering. There 
is no form of self-discipline to be compared to 
that which can be practised by dealing with 
little tiresome engagements and interviews and 
interruptions in a perfectly tranquil and good- 
humoured way, giving the whole of one's attention 
to the matter in hand, and not allowing the visitor 
to feel that he is being hurried or that he has 
intruded. I remember that Bishop Wilkinson said 



334 Along the Road 

with great sternness to a friend of mine, who had 
been late for an engagement, " You ought to be 
punctual; but if you are not punctual, you must 
not allow yourself to be fussed, or you commit a 
double fault. Now that you are here, we will 
both discuss the matter as carefully and delib- 
erately as if you had been in time." 

After all, few people's time is as valuable as 
all that! We are not put into the world to 
carry out our own programme exactly and pre- 
cisely, but to rub shoulders with other people, to 
increase our sympathies, to make others feel at 
ease, to add to the general geniality of life. We 
must not, of course, allow casual encounters 
with other people to thrust our })articular bit of 
work into a corner, or, like an acquaintance of 
njy own, go about paying calls and complaining 
that our social engagements leave us no time to 
read or think. But we are in the world to live, 
and interruptions, as we call them, are part of 
life. 

I do not think there is anything which is more 
gratifying and encouraging than to have an inter- 
view with some busy public man, and to find him, 
to all appearances, kindly, amiable, and leisurely. 
I had to see the head of a great department the 
other day on a small point of business. I know 
what his work is, and I did not wish to take up 
his time. But instead of a brief and severe inter- 
view, I came away feeling that I had made a 
friend. The great man had thrown himself back 



On Being Interrupted 335 

in his chair, had dealt in a few words with the 
points before us, and had then talked genially 
and interestingly about the further issues raised, 
inviting criticism and weighing suggestions. As 
I went out another visitor was shown in. I do 
not know if the minister was bewailing his 
hard fate inwardly, but there was not a sign 
of anything but goodwill and interest in his 
kindly smile, his pleasant handshake, and his 
courteous invitation to me to interview him 
again if the matter proved not to be perfectly 
clear. 

The important thing is not to lose our hold 
upon life; it is a great temptation to busy and 
energetic people to overvalue their work and to 
undervalue their relations with others. But 
routine-work is not necessarily valuable, except in 
so far as it is a discipline against restlessness, in so 
far as it steadies and strengthens character. No 
one can avoid drudgery, but on the other hand 
mere purposeless drudgery is not valuable at all ; 
it consumes energy and it diminishes vitality. 
Nothing is so clearly stated in the Gospel as the 
principle that we ought not to get immersed in 
the details of life so as to lose sight of higher 
and wider things; and a man who gets so at- 
tached to routine-work that he cannot bear the 
smallest deviation from it, is little better than 
the miser who can think of nothing but his 
money ; both the drudge and the miser are infected 
by a perverted virtue : the one begins by believing 



336 Along the Road 

in economy, and both end by becoming mere 
machines. 

Interruptions, then, are often but the influx of 
the tide of humanity into the ordered life. The 
danger nowadays is that we all tend to become 
specialists; and specialism unduly pursued means 
a loss of due proportion. A father who is so 
busy that he cannot find time to see anything of 
his children, however exalted a view he may take 
of the dignity and importance of work, is really 
not doing his duty at all, but sacrificing duty to 
inclination. Horace says that it is pleasant to 
play the fool in season; it is not only pleasant, 
it is a plain Christian duty to cultivate affection- 
ate relations with others, and to contribute one's 
share to the genial current of the world. I re- 
member an excellent schoolmaster who was very 
anxious on principle to make friends with his 
boys, but if an old pupil dropped in to see him, 
he fidgeted in his chair, hummed and hawed, 
glanced at his watch, kept the papers he was 
correcting in his hand, and gave such a sense 
that his precious time was being wasted that 
the attempt was seldom made a second time. 
The other day I had a severe lesson myself, which 
I hope to take to heart. A colleague of my own 
at Cambridge said to me that an undergraduate 
would like to consult me on a small matter. I 
said, "Why does he not come to see me?" The 
reply was, " He would like to, but he is afraid 
of interrupting you." I quite appreciated the 



On Being Interrupted 337 

courtesy and consideration of the young man; 
but for all that I look upon it as a severe and 
probably merited criticism, and I do not relish 
a compliment to my industry at the expense of 
my humanity. 

Tlie gist of the whole matter is that we must 
teach ourselves to regard interruptions not as 
necessary evils, but as welcome links with the 
world. We must court them rather than resent 
them, and we must practise, as far as we can, 
tlie art of never being preoccupied or hurried or 
snappish, remembering that however important 
our work and occupation may seem, we are human 
beings first, and that no ideal, however zealously 
pursued, can supersede the claims and the duties 
and the amenities of life. 



DEMOCRACY 

Tt is recorded that some one, talkiii<T^ to Arch- 
bishop Tait about Church affairs, used the phrase, 
"the present crisis." "What crisis?" said the 
Archbishop; "there has always been a crisis in 
Church affairs, ever since I was old enough to 
remember." The same is probably true of all 
affairs, political as well as ecclesiastical. But 
the interest, and perhaps we may add, the anxiety 
of the present crisis in politics is simply this. 
The people have not been given power, nor have 
they exactly taken it — they have simply found 
out how to use the power they have long had; 
and the question is : How is this going to affect 
our social life? That is the only interest that 
there is in politics for ordinary people. What 
most of us desire is to be as free as possible to 
live on the lines we desire, and to be governed 
as little as possible. Politics are no doubt an 
excellent and exciting game for the people who 
have a hand in them. But the less need there is 
for politics, the happier a State is. If everyone 
were rational and considerate and disinterested, 
there would be no need for politics at all. 
338 



Democracy 339 

The ordinary man is no more interested in 
technical politics than he is interested in cnlinary 
processes. What he wants is a well-cooked dinner 
at a reasonable cost ; and as long as he gets that, 
he cares very little how it is prepared. If his 
dinner goes on being ill-cooked, and still more if 
it continues to be expensive as well, he may go 
into the kitchen and kick the pots and pans about, 
and even dismiss the cook; and in politics that 
is a revolution. But what the ordinary man 
wants is to get the most and the best out of 
life. The worst of it is that the process of get- 
ting the most out of life in many cases involves 
other people ia not getting anything out of life 
except unpleasant drudgery: and it can hardly 
be expected that the drudges should acquiesce. 
There was once an aged nobleman who closed his 
park to the public because he said that it fussed 
him and destroyed his sense of privacy to see 
anyone within five hundred yards of his house. 
He had a perfect right to feel like that, and if 
he could, to secure his own comfort ; but if every- 
one in an over-populated country felt the same, 
it is evident that there would not be enough 
privacy to go round. 

The object, of course, of a State should be to 
secure the welfare of the many at the cost of the 
least possible inconvenience to the few. There 
must, of course, be inconvenience from time to 
time. If a man in a town has small-pox, it is 
no doubt much pleasanter for him to be nursed 



340 Along the Road 

iu his own home; but tlie comraiinity have a 
perfect right to compel him to be moved to an 
isolation hospital. They cannot be expected to sub- 
ordinate their unwillingness to catch small-pox: 
to his claim for personal comfort. Of course, it 
involves a certain injustice if a majorit}^ of people 
have to coerce a minority. But it is plain that 
it is at least more fair than that a minority sliould 
coerce a majority. The duty of the State is to 
give all its members e(pial opportunities, to re- 
ward them according to their merits, to safeguard 
the weak, and to aim at educating everyone to 
take a reasonable, sensible, and good-humoured 
view of the rights of others. 

Probably the interests of the State are best 
served by encouraging all individual talent and 
enterju'ise as far as i)0ssible. The more that 
people have motives for exertion, for making the 
best of themselves and their talents, the whole- 
somer and stronger the State will be. If it 
attempts to subordinate people too much, to claim 
the same amount of the same kind of labour from 
everyone, no matter what their dispositions and 
faculties may be, one gets a kind of lifeless social- 
ism which is fatal to vitality and progress. 
Charles Kingsley was once travelling in the 
United States and met a newspaper editor who 
said to him : " Mr. Kingsley, I hear you are a 
democrat. Well, so am I. My motto is, ' When- 
ever you see a head above the crowd, hit it.' " 
" Good heavens ! " said Kingsley, commenting 



Democracy 341 

upon the remark, '' what a ghastly conceptiou 
of human equality, to attempt, not to raise every 
one to the level of the best, but to boycott all 
force, all originality, all nobility, and to reduce 
all to a dead level! If that is democracy, I am 
no democrat ! '' 

I was talking the other day to a well-known 
man, who said to me that he w^as perpetually 
surprised and interested by the very feminine 
view which his wife took of politics. They had 
been reading some political speech or other, and 
his wife made a depreciatory criticism. " I see 
you are not interested in democracy," said my 
friend. His wife was silent for a moment. Then 
she said : " Xo, I am not — I am only interested 
in the persons whom democracy brings to the 
front." That is a very sane and wholesome critic- 
ism. The thing which makes many people fight 
shy of democracy is that it seems to be the glori- 
fication of the average man, and not of the ideal 
man. The average man is not interesting. There 
was a curious series of portraits some time ago 
in the Strand Magazine ^ I think, obtained by 
photographing hundreds of people on the same 
plate, so that one obtained a sort of average 
human being. The interest of the pictures to 
me was the extremely undistinguished and even 
muzzy result. Not only had the average man as 
thus depicted not a single attractive feature, he 
was mean, vacuous, suspicious, and dull. The last 
thing that one desires for humanity is to co- 



342 Along the Road 

ordinate them on imiuterestiiig lines, and to 
reduce all to a prosaic type. 

The views of the average man form what is 
commonly known as public opinion, and public 
opinion is a very curious thing to stud3\ The 
people who form it cannot exin-ess it; they are 
imi)erturbably silent. They do not even know 
what they think. They know what they think, 
when it is put to them; but they are not per- 
suaded or convinced. If a view consonant with 
public opinion is expressed to them, they say: 
" Yes, I think that! " If a view at variance with 
public opinion is expressed to them, they say: 
" That is stuff and nonsense ! " The same view 
that they have condemned will perhaps be ex- 
pressed to them a few years later, and they will 
have found out that they do think so, and will 
say : " Yes, that is sensible." But where it all 
comes from, and how the process of leavening 
takes place, is undiscoverable. It is simply there. 
Public opinion is deeply sensitive to anything 
that is picturesque and jDathetic. A single strik- 
ing incident has more weight with it than a row 
of excellent reasons. The curious thing is that 
it is not very sensible; it is melodramatic and 
it is sentimental. Sometimes it is attracted by 
a personality, by look or gesture or eloquence, 
and it swallows a set of opinions whole. " So- 
and-so says that, and it must be right." The 
truth is that it is really a kind of childlike in- 
stinct for what is likeable and pleasant, uot a 



Democracy 343 

reasoned thing at all; and perhaps the best 
service that a man can do to his generation is 
to present reasonable ideas and principles in a 
striking or attractive light, and thus contribute 
to the enlargement and enlightenment of public 
opinion. 

But the worst thing that anyone can do is 
to yield to pessimistic panic. Things do not 
really change very fast; even a tremendous up- 
heaval like the French Revolution did not affect 
tlie ordinary life of France very deeply. One 
class was affected most prejudicially by it; but 
there was no great levelling of property, no very 
marked increase of social equality. What the 
duty of the ordinary citizen is, is to make just 
concessions amiably, and to mind his own busi- 
ness. It is not as though a majority of any 
country are ever in favour of general insecurity 
and pillage. " No gentleman," says even the 
atrocious ^Ir. Hyde, in Stevenson's great allegory, 
'^ but wishes to avoid a row." What most sen- 
sible people desire is labour, order, and peace. 
Most reasonable people like work, and feel dull 
without it; and nearly all desire an orderly and 
peaceful home; and democracy is just as much 
interested in securing all that as the most en- 
lightened of despots. What a democracy is per- 
fectly right in demanding is the amelioration of 
conditions which reduce labour to helpless 
drudgery, and make the orderly and peaceful 
home impossible. But this cannot be secured by 



344 Along the Road 

universal pillage. The luxuries which democracy 
has a perfect right to say shall not be indulged 
in are the luxuries of idleness and disorder and 
contempt and oppression. Public opinion has 
made itself felt on tliese points already, and it 
is likely to make itself still more felt. The hope 
of the nation lies in a sincere attempt to amelio- 
rate evil conditions of existence, in bringing 
wholesome and ennobling pleasures within the 
reach of all, and in aiming at simplicity of life 
and cordial relations; it cannot be done in a 
moment; but neither can it be done by grudging 
and resentful acquiescence in movements which 
one is powerless to check. We must agree swiftly, 
as the Gospel says, and it is better to meet the 
reasonable demand than to have the uttermost 
farthing extorted. 



ABSENT-MINDEDNESS 

Absent-mindedness is not in itself a charm, but 
I have seldom known an absent-minded person 
who was not charming. It generally goes with 
gnilelessness, sweet temper, and dreaminess. One 
of the reasons, indeed, why absent-mindedness, 
which has its inconveniences both for its owner 
and others, survives in a temperament, is because 
the person in question is generally incapable of be- 
ing vexed or put out by small forgetfulnesses and 
absurdities ; if he is so vexed, he generally learns, 
very speedily, presence of mind, or whatever is 
the precise opposite of absent-mindedness. But 
besides a certain childlikeness of nature, absent- 
mindedness generally implies distinct mental 
ability, and the power of being absorbed in a 
train of thought. Indeed absent-mindedness com- 
bined with irritability and stupidity would result 
in about as unpleasing a mixture of qualities as 
it would be possible to conceive of! 

One of the most absent-minded people I ever 

knew was a more or less distinguished ecclesiastic 

at whose house I used to visit as a child. He had 

won some fame in his youth as a poet, and he 

345 



346 Along the Road 

was, when I remember him, a preacher of some 
force; but he could not be (le])en(led upou in that 
capacity. Whatever he was interested in at the 
moment he preached about, and he had the power 
of being interested in very dreary things. His 
sermons were like reveries; indeed, his whole 
rendering of the service was that of a man who 
was reading a book to himself and often finding 
it unexpectedly beautiful and interesting. The 
result was sometimes extremely startling, because 
one felt as if one had never heard the familiar 
words before. I remember his reading the ac- 
count of the Nativity in a wonderfully feeling 
manner, " because there was no room for them 
at the inn." I do not know how the effect was 
communicated; it was delivei-ed with a half- 
mournful, half-incredulous smile. If those who 
refused them admittance had only known what 
they were doing! 

He had a great head of hair, my old friend, 
which looked as if it were never brushed; great 
hollow melancholy eyes, and a deliberate, mourn- 
ful voice which seemed to come from very far 
away. He was always dressed with great shabbi- 
ness, and had yet a remote and stately air. He 
used to be an object partly of terror and partly 
of sj^mpathy to us children. He never seemed to 
recognise us, and had a way of gently detaining 
us with a hand if he met us, and saying, " I 
know who jou are, child, but I can't find the 
name!"- and if there is one thing of which a 



Absent-Mindedness 347 

child is incapable, it is of enunciating its Christ- 
ian name and surname in public. I don't think 
he was an effective clergyman, because he seldom 
knew his parishioners by sight; but he was re- 
garded with a mixture of respect and compassion. 
A friend of his told me that she was once sitting 
with his wife — he had fallen in love in his time 
and had somehow or other found words to com- 
municate the fact — when he came in with one of 
his sleeves turned up, and the air of a man who 
had made a great discovery. He had caught sight 
of the lining of his coat, and it had occurred to 
him that it formed a little coat of itself, inside the 
other. His idea was that, if it were taken out, it 
would make a pretty little summer jacket for him, 
and he made the suggestion with an air of deep 
practical sagacity. He was adored in his own fam- 
ily for his sweetness and helplessness, and he was 
tenderly guarded and interpreted to the world. 

There is a charming story by a German novelist 
— Freytag, I think — which depicts a professor of 
the same unworldly, contemplative kind. He goes 
to spend the day at a friend's house, and unfortu- 
nately hears the cry of some fowls which are 
being killed for the dinner, with the result that 
he loses his appetite and cannot touch any food. 
The careful, homely hostess, when he goes away, 
insists on giving him a cold chicken wrapped up 
in paper, that when he gets home he may not be 
starved. The faithful house-dog sees the pro- 
fessor pocket this in the hall, and gets into his 



34^ Along the Road 

sagacious head the idea that the professor is 
a thief; so he slips out with him and tugs 
at his pocket as he goes along. Every time that 
the dog tugs, the professor takes off his hat, 
and as the dog continues tugging, the professor 
says, "Thank you, dear, I did bow!" The fact 
is that the professor's sister has arranged that 
when she is out walking with him, and they pass 
someone whom the professor ought to salute, 
but whom he will certainly not recognise, she 
should give him a signal to remove his hat by 
pulling at his coat. 

The most notable instance of absent-minded- 
ness, or rather abstraction, I ever saw, was when 
I was a young man; I was in London, and as 
I walked up Whitehall, Mr. Gladstone, who was 
then Premier, came out of Downing Street, and 
turned up to Trafalgar Square. I walked for 
some way just behind him. He was entirely ab- 
sorbed in some train of thought. He was rather 
sliabbily dressed, in an old frock-coat and ill- 
biushed hat; and I remember noticing that his 
trousers were so much trodden down at the heel 
that the threads of the fabric swept the ground. 
One of his hands was clenched at his side, and as 
he walked he kept opening the fingers suddenly 
and closing them again. It was at a time when 
there was a great deal of political animus — I 
expect over Home Rule — and I was amused and 
interested to see the sort of greetings he got. 
Some people stood still as he passed, bareheaded. 



Absent-Mindedness 349 

hat ill liaiul. Two fashionably-dressed womeu in 
a victoria turned round to observe him, and one 
of them shook her fist at him. But the great man 
Avalked along, entirely oblivious of everything, 
just removing his hat occasionally when he was 
very markedly and insistently saluted. I am sure 
T never saw any man show such entire uncon- 
sciousness of his surroundings, and it was an 
extremely iiftpressive sight. 

I suppose that of all the interesting figures of 
the last century the most abstracted by far was 
the poet Coleridge in his later days. He held a 
sort of little court at Highgate, where he lived in 
a doctor's house, and discoursed of lofty subjects 
in a continuous and misty monologue to an ad- 
niii'ing throng. There is a delicious description 
of the ceremony in Carlyle's Life of Sterling, one 
of the most picturesque and humorous passages 
which Carlyle ever put on paper. Carlyle re- 
garded the oracle with extreme interest and very 
decided contempt. He said that he listened to 
the poet discoursing for two stricken hours with- 
out conveying to any of his hearers the slightest 
idea of what he was talking about. Charles 
Lamb invented one of his most humorous stories 
to illustrate the same thing. He said that he 
met Coleridge on Hampstead Heath, and that 
Coleridge took him aside into a dingle, laid hold 
of the button of his coat, and began to expound 
some abstruse subject with extraordinary earnest- 
ness. Lamb remembered that he had an appoint- 



350 Along the Road 

meut elsewhere, but saw no way of escaping, until 
at last in desperation he got out a knife, severed 
the button from his coat, leaving it in Coleridge's 
fingers, and slipped away. Some hours later he 
returned and heard Coleridge's voice rolling and 
echoing in a full tide of eloquence among the 
gorse-bushes. Lamb said that he went quietly 
back to his place, and that Coleridge continued 
the exposition, never having noticed his absence, 
and still clasping the severed button. 

It was an inherited characteristic with Cole- 
ridge. His father, I believe, or possibly his 
grandfather, who was a clergyman, had been 
known to walk into the vestry in the course of 
the service, and then, oblivious of the fact that 
there was more to come, he would divest himself 
of his robes and go back to the vicarage, leaving 
the congregation waiting. 

A friend of mine once told me that when he 
was a boy an absent-minded friend, who was a 
very fine reader, came to stay for a Sunday with 
his father, who was a country squire. His father 
was accustomed to read the lessons in church, but 
being kei)t away that morning by a cold, he asked 
the friend to read them instead of him. He 
gladly consented. What was the consternation 
of the congregation when the stranger left the 
family pew at the end of the Yenite^ and walked 
briskly to the lectern. The clergyman was, how- 
ever, equal to the situation. He leant forwards 
and said in a very deferential manner to the 



Absent-Mindedness 351 

eager aspirant, " We had thought of having the 
Psalms first/' as if they were for once departing 
from the ordinary ritual. The friend was not in 
the least discomposed, said with a polite bow, 
" By all means," and returned to his place with 
perfect equanimity. It is just that tranquillity 
of nerve which makes abstraction possible, and 
also removes any of the usual misery of having 
made a ridiculous mistake. 

In spite, however, of the fact that absent- 
mindedness is rather a charming quality, or at 
all events an accomjjaniment of charming quali- 
ties, it is not a thing to practise or to indulge, 
and absent-minded people ought as far as possible 
in early life to endeavour to bring themselves 
into line with the world. One does not as a rule 
commit important business, which needs to be 
punctually performed, to a man liable to fits of 
abstraction; and the absent-minded are only too 
apt to slip dreamily and good-naturedly through 
life, engaged in very harmless and amiable trains 
of thought, but effecting nothing and doing very 
little to keep the world on the right lines. In- 
deed, the chief use of the absent-minded man is 
to give to his own circle the anxious and tender 
care of one who is not adapted to the rigidity of 
circumstance and routine, and to evoke a sort of 
amused love, which is beautiful because it centres 
on a character which is so childlike and pure, 
and which never discovers that all are not as 
guileless and disinterested as himself. 



PEACE 

I SAT listening the other day to a beautiful sermon 
on the Peace of God, on the text, " My peace I 
leave with you, my peace I give unto you; not 
as the world giveth give I unto you." It was a 
beautiful sermon, as I say, the sentences clear 
and strong, the thoughts delicate and refined, and 
the whole of it transfused with a fine emotion. 
The Christian, said the preacher, was to seek 
peace and make peace by every means in his 
power, but he was never to sacrifice principle, 
or to abandon what he held to be true. He in- 
stanced the case of the Congo atrocities, and he 
said that this afforded a good illustration of 
the point. The Christian must protest against 
tyranny and wrong-doing, even if his protest were 
to endanger the peace of Europe. And then he 
went on to speak of the doctrines of the faith, 
and he said that a man must never conceal or 
dissemble his belief in those doctrines in order 
to conciliate an opponent, even though he knew 
that the result must be strife and hostility. 

And then the preacher went on to speak of 
the other side of the question, the peace which 
352 



Peace 353 

must keep the hearts and minds of believers, the 
peace that comes from the sense of work faith- 
fully done, and under the blessing of which a 
man might wait patiently for whatever God chose 
to send him. By this time I was wishing, as I 
often do, to ask the preacher some questions, that 
he might, if he could, resolve the difficulties of 
liis theme; because it seemed to me that he was 
straining the sense of the vrord peace somewhat. 
That is always the difficulty of using these large 
vague, indistinct words, which have a hundred 
shades of meaning. In the first place, I felt I 
could have no clear idea of what peace was, if 
the aiming at it might result in hostility. Let 
me take this point first, and try to disentangle 
what T mean. Peace, in its ordinary sense, in- 
volves, I think, some suspension or cessation of 
strife and hostility. It is a calm security which 
falls upon the minds of those who have been 
involved in some wrangling dispute, some heated 
animosity. The essence of it seems to be that 
man can, while it lasts, feel a sense of safety and 
leisure and goodwill, when he can give himself 
wholly to work or thought which involves no 
interference with the rights and joys of others, 
and further, it is a state in which he fears no 
invasion of his rights, no violence or menaces, but 
is sure that his neighbours regard him with the 
same kindness and benevolence with which he 
regards them. And thus it seems to me essen- 
tially a state of things where men have not only 
23 



354 Along the Road 

agreed to drop differences, but to unite in sym- 
pathy and goodwill. 

Now it does not seem to me that it can be 
described as peace when two adversaries agree, 
as it is called, to differ. It is not peace when 
a man says, " So-and-so is an unreasonable and 
wrong-headed person. He is wholly wedded to 
his own erroneous ideas, and is unable to see 
another's point of view. But it is not worth 
while squabbling and coming to blows over the 
question. He will find out his mistake in time." 
That does not seem to me a peaceful attitude at 
all ! The attitude of peace appears to me to be 
when a man says : " Whatever happens, there must 
be no animosity between me and So-and-so. It 
is true that he sees things in a different light; 
but in a matter of opinion, which cannot be scien- 
tifically demonstrated, he has as much right to 
his belief as I have. My own view may be wrong, 
but it is the best I can arrive at, and my observa- 
tions lead me to think it is true, and I must work 
on in the light of my thought, just as he must. 
After all, we agree about the main principles, 
and can live in amity and love." If one sees two 
good people, kindly, active, unselfish, virtuous, 
disagreeing fiercely on some point of detail, it is 
generally safe to assume that the detail is in 
reality unimportant, or that they need not either 
of them be in the right ; for the melancholy thing 
is that a difference of opinion about details divides 
people far more than an agreement about prin- 



Peace 355 

ciples unites them. I remember once how sharply 
a congregation were divided about the erection 
of a crucifix in a church. One section held that 
it was a beautiful and natural emblem of re- 
demption ; another section held, with even greater 
vehemence, that it was a symbol which suggested 
and encouraged idolatry. Both parties had, no 
doubt, some right on their side; and it seemed 
to me a case where the section who approved 
should have given way to the section who ob- 
jected, because, in any case, worship was possible 
without the crucifix. But the defenders of the 
symbol chose rather to consider the objection as 
an almost blasphemous wrong done to the honour 
of our Lord, and so the unhappy strife continued. 
There seems to me no meaning at all in the 
beatitude about peacemakers, unless a Christian 
is ready to make some sacrifice and compromise, 
or at all events to give up pressing some aspect 
of doctrine as undeniably true. A man may well, 
in his own mind and heart, believe that a certain 
doctrine is true, without wishing to enforce the 
concurrence in it upon those who quite sincerely 
do not believe it to be true. Take, for instance, 
such a doctrine as that of infant baptism ; a man 
may trust the tradition of his Church, and say 
that it is not possible to tell with exactness when 
the conception of moral truth dawns upon a 
childish mind, and that it is a great strength for 
a child to realise, as soon as it realises anything, 
that it is a baptised member of Christ's Church. 



356 Along the Road 

Rut, on the other liand, a man may maintain that 
there is a danger in regarding the ceremony as 
a kind of superstitious charm, securing salvation 
in a mechanical way, and that it should not be 
administered until a child has a full conscious- 
ness of what is happening. That view is based 
upon a conscientious reason, and ought to be 
respected, if sincerely held. There is much in 
the Gospel about love and helpfulness and con- 
ciliation, and not much about inflexible adherence 
to doctrine or despotic intolerance. 

One thinks of the old story about the two 
hermits in Egypt who began to be afraid that 
they were living too peaceful and harmonious a 
life together. One of them said : " Let us have a 
quarrel, like people in the world, so that we can 
learn how to defend our faith courageously. T 
will take one of these stones, and set it up and 
say it is mine; and you shall say it is yours, 
and then we will have a fine dispute over it." 

"Excellent!" said the other. "That will be 
good for us both. We are growing lazy and 
indifl'erent." 

So the first put up a stone and said, " That 
stone is mine! " And the other said, " I am sure 
you are very welcome to it." And then after a 
pause the first said, " Well, I give it to you, and 
it is yours." And the second said, " I thank you 
with all my heart." Then the first said, " But, 
though it is yours, I take it from you and use 
it as my own." And the second said, " It is the 



Peace 357 

greatest pleasure I can have to yield it to you." 
Then they both laughed, and gave up trying to 
quarrel any more. 

And now I must go on to the second point, and 
try to inquire what the peace of God, which may 
come to bless the heart of a man, can be. It 
obviously cannot be a self-righteous kind of com- 
placency, a self-satisfaction which is so deep that 
nothing can ruffle it. There is a story of an old 
eighteenth-century bishop who held many rich 
preferments ; and when he lay dying, he was seen 
to be smiling to himself; his chaplain asked him 
what gave him such tranquillity, and he said, 
" The consciousness of a well-spent life I " But 
this cannot be the peace of God which a Christian 
ought to have. It cannot be a sense of having 
found the world a comfortable place and god- 
liness a profitable thing. It must be something 
deeper and purer than that, a tranquillity far 
removed from any sense of merit, which can be 
disturbed by no misunderstanding and troubled 
by no suffering or loss. It must be a humble 
and penitent frame of mind, grateful for mercies, 
and with a calm assurance that trials and troubles 
do not come fortuitously, but from a Father's 
loving hand. Such a peace is not desirous of 
proclaiming its own convictions, nor anxious to 
defend its own consistency; and still less bent 
either upon judging the teachings of others or 
enforcing its own happy conclusions upon them. 
It concerns itself not at all with controversies or 



35^ Along the Road 

disputes, but only with concord and sympathy. 
Whatever happens, it cannot be right for a 
Christian to adopt a provocative attitude about 
his own beliefs and hopes ; he must hold to them, 
but he must not try to enforce them. The only 
thing he has warrant in the Gospel for withstand- 
ing is the tyrannical and Pharisaical temper! If 
the Christian is to turn his cheek to the smiter, 
it cannot be intended that he is presently, in the 
cause of principle, to try his hand at a buffet, 
and hope that his adversary will permit him to 
make it two. There is really a great deal more 
in, the Gospel about literal non-resistance than 
we find it convenient to admit. Can it be that 
by our falling back upon more practical methods 
the coming of the kingdom is so long delayed? 



CONVERSATION 

I WAS bicj^cling recently alone in the depths of 
the country, and took refuge from a tremendous 
thunder-plump of rain in a mean little public- 
house, with a stone floor, and drearily-painted, 
much-worn pews of wood. There were two old 
rustic men sheltering at the same time, who held 
a long conversation, if it can be called a con- 
versation, where each of the two followed his 
own line of thought, and where the remarks of 
the one seemed to suggest nothing to the other, 
and not even to constitute an interruption to the 
train of settled reflection. 

It was about the weather, this duet, and I 
cannot reproduce it. One of the two was of 
opinion that the water of a thunder-shower was 
not as wholesome as the water of ordinary rain. 
" There seems something got into it which ain't 
quite wholesome," he said. The statement came 
to an end after a minute or two; then there was 
a silence, and then the first speaker began again 
with the same remark with which he had begun 
the first strophe. To my surprise and amusement, 
the second conversation was almost identically the 
359 



36o Along the Road 

same as the first. The same opinion was ex- 
pressed by the second speaker about the unhealthi- 
ness of thunder-rain, and it was, as before, mutely 
disregarded by the other. 

When it was over, I thought that I might 
myself intervene, so I said : " Some people say 
that a thunder-storm breaks up the weather." 
They both turned to me pleasantly, and the first 
speaker, after a short pause of reflection, said, 
" Yes, they do say it. It 's the weather they go 
by." T wrestled in vain with the bearing of the 
remark; and presently the second speaker said, 
with the air of introducing a new element into 
the talk, that there seemed to be something got 
into the rain of a thunder-shower which was not 
quite wholesome. After this, the sun came out, 
the last drops of the storm fell with a resounding 
flick, and we parted with cordial farewells and 
with much mutual esteem. As I went away, I 
heard the second speaker say to the first, in a 
tone of deep conviction, " Yes, it 's the weather 
they go by." 

A day or two later I was sitting in my club 
in London ; the big saloon, with its arm-chairs 
and sofas, its paper-bestrewn tables, its stands of 
books and magazines, was filling up at tea-time. 
An old gentleman with a grey beard was sitting 
near me, when there drifted into his proximity 
another old gentleman with a wig and an eye- 
glass. They greeted cordially and arranged to 
have tea together. The grey-bearded old man was 



Conversation 3^1 

turning over a paper, which he now laid down, 
and presently said to the other, " Well, so we 
have lost our greatest humourist ! " The other 
said, "Our greatest what?'' The first replied, 
" Our greatest humourist — that is to say, our 
greatest humorous writer." " Ah," said the other, 
in the tone of a man who had rapidly grasped an 
obscure thought, " I dare say you are referring 
to Gilbert? " " Yes," said the first, " our greatest 
humourist, Gilbert." " Yes," said the man with 
the wig, " you are about right there ; he was a 
very humorous writer, and we 've lost him, in- 
deed." " Now I don't suppose," said the grey- 
beard, " that there was ever such a fortunate 
conjunction of amusing poetry and straightfor- 
ward music as his comic operas! " " Why," said 
the man with the wig, " you refer to Sullivan, I 
dare say? " " That 's right ! " said the grey-beard, 
" Gilbert and Sullivan, there was a straightfor- 
ward conjunction." 

The conversation proceeded for a long time on 
these simple lines; when the man with the wig 
rose and said that he must be going, and that it 
had been a great pleasure to have a good talk. 

There was something very refreshing to find 
the same process going on all the world over. 
The joys of conversation! I found myself reflect- 
ing what a curious thing ordinary talk is. There 
is no communication of ideas, no interchange of 
sentiments, no comparison of experiences. Each 
of the performers in each dialogue had got some 



362 Along the Road 

thought of a dim kind in his mind, which he 
slowly translated into the medium of speech. 
There was no attempt to correct impressions. 
The only difference between the uncultured and 
the cultured conversation was this. The two 
rustics had not the time or the energy even to 
listen to each other's contribution. In the club- 
conversation, the man with the wig had the pleas- 
ure of mental discovery, of gauging exactly the 
thought in the grey-bearded man's mind. 

But it was a social refreshment in both cases; 
and I perceived by degrees that conversation is 
only very rarely an exchange of thought at all. 
It is just the establishing of a personal relation. 
We are most of us like men who are stumbling 
in a mist, with a painful sense of isolation. Sud- 
denly we encounter another human being simi- 
larly occupied. We draw near, we clasp hands, 
we exchange signals of consciousness, we are glad 
to find another creature of the same breed as 
ourselves in our neighbourhood : and then we part 
and stumble into the mist again. Society is after 
all but an organisation to remind ourselves that 
we are not alone, that our bewilderment and our 
sense of isolation are shared by other like-minded 
beings ! 

Of course, it is happier still if we have any 
ideas as to what it is all about, and can exchange 
them. But the essential point is still the personal 
relation. It is that which matters, even more 
than the ideas. One may love people very much, 



Conversation 363 

and yet never interchange any ideas with them, 
because the two minds may be on wholly different 
planes. I watched a mother the other day with 
a little boy, about whose health she was in great 
anxiety, sitting on her knee. There was a 
closer bond between them than there is between 
two intellectual men-friends! They were utterly 
happy in each other's nearness, with perfect trust- 
fulness on the one hand, and intense affection on 
the other. Yet the little boy had no idea what 
the mother was thinking about, and the mother 
could not even dimly guess at what the little brain 
was imagining or recollecting. Yet how much 
deeper and more sacred a thing was that union 
of love than the elaborately-made friendship of 
two critical persons, lucidly aware of each other's 
mental foibles and failings I 

All this may be very obvious, no doubt, but it 
is a thing which we constantly forget. How 
swiftly we can form a friendship with a congenial 
nature, by glance and touch and silent proximity ; 
how far away one often is from one whose mental 
yjrocesses one can follow and admire! It is not 
in the intellectual region that our relations with 
others are formed ; it is in that narrow enclosure 
where the soul walks alone, peering out through 
the bars to see what it is that passes by. That 
is a thing which one only learns as life goes on. 
When one was young, one used to think that 
making friends was a mental process. One had 
to talk out things, to get at a friend's opinions, 



364 Along the Road 

to know what he thought. As one gets older, one 
cares less about opinions and thoughts, one de- 
sires more and more to know what a friend feels, 
and one grows to value unintelligent affection 
above intelligent sympathy. Even if a person's 
opinions conflict with one's own at every point, 
yet if he is at ease with one, if he cares to be 
with one, that is what matters. I used to wonder 
in the old days, at the extraordinary alliances 
which I saw: A husband of vivid intellectual 
sympathies and a dull, homely wife; or a bril- 
liant, artistic, sensitive woman, with a robust 
and comfortable mate. And yet such misfits often 
seemed the most contented combinations. One 
did not see that mutual love is often best sus- 
tained by an admiration for opposite qualities 
— that the brilliant husband could see the 
superficiality of his own flourishes, and repose 
gratefully upon his wife's sense and practical 
judgment, while the wife could unenvyingly ad- 
mire a vividness which she could not understand. 
One forgot the necessary alternations of stimulus 
and restfulness, one overlooked the meaning of 
the whole affair. What matters most of all in 
life is mutual confidence, the sense of unity, not 
of idea and not even of aim, but of regard and 
hope. What makes many people miss happiness 
in life — and this is particularly true of intel- 
lectual people — is that they look too much for 
partnership in superficial things, and make the 
mistake of thinking that life means occupation 



Conversation 365 

and talk. Life is a much deeper and stronger 
thing than that; occupation is often nothing more 
than the channel in which it flows, while talk 
is but the breaking of bubbles on the surface of 
the stream. 

I do not mean that I undervalue conversation ; 
to find anyone who will frankly set his mind 
alongside of» one's own, say without affectation 
what he thinks, hear without impatience what one 
believes, is one of the greatest pleasures in the 
world. But, on the other hand, one learns not 
to despise the dull and sticky conversations which 
one has in many cases to endure, when words 
seem nothing but courteous patches stuck over 
gaps of silence, because one finds that, even so, 
something remains; a sense of having been sig- 
nalled to by another pilgrim on the lonely waste, 
a sense of proximity triumphantly carried off 
from an hour of boredom. A great many people 
think very vaguely and dumbly, and are quite 
unable to translate even those vague currents of 
emotion into intelligible w^ords. But the point is 
to let those emotional currents mingle if possible, 
to get the sense of fellowship and union. Some 
of my best friends are people whose conversation 
at first meeting bored me ; while there are people, 
whose talk always amuses and charms me, with 
whom I have never been able to establish any 
relation at all. One must not think lightly of 
reason, or complain of its hardness and dryness; 
but it is more important by far to keep one's 



366 Along the Road 

emotions vivid aud strong, to grasp every hand 
held out, to answer every call, and to see in 
every human being one meets, not a probable 
antagonist, but a possible friend. 



WORK AND PLAY 

There is an old proverb which says, " If a thing 
is worth doing, it is worth doing well." That 
is fairly obvions; but the usual connection in 
which it is quoted is that if a thing is worth 
doing, it is not worth doing badly; and that I 
liumbly and heartily deny. Used in that sense 
it becomes a brutal and stupid cudgel in the 
hands of grim and tiresome elderly people, who 
are always looking about for an opportunity to 
interfere and scold; and because they dare not 
do it to grown-up persons, they use their cudgel 
on the backs of young people, who cannot or 
probably will not answer back. There was long 
ago a dreary friend of my family, a dry, creaking 
sort of man, who looked as if he were made out 
of wood, who liked nothing better, I used to think, 
than spoiling our fun. He was what the old 
books called a " killjoy." I remember once that 
he found me playing the piano all by myself, and 
doing it very badly. He listened a little, and 
then said that he did not think it was worth 
playing the piano unless one could do it better 
than that. I might have replied that the only 
367 



368 Along the Road 

way to do it better was to go on doing it until 
one improved; but I merely closed the piano and 
fled from him. I do not know that he meant it 
unkindly; I should think he had a vague idea 
of exhorting me to moral effort. Indeed, I had 
myself a lesson the other day, ex ore infantiumf 
that one had better not indulge in criticisms. A 
little girl showed me some poems she had written ; 
I praised them duly, and then pointed out a line 
which was not grammatical, and which could be 
altered by the substitution of a single w^ord. She 
took it from my hand and looked at it; then 
she said in a nonchalant way, " I don't think I 
shall alter it." Her mother, who was present, 
said, " Oh, but if you are shown that anything 
is wrong, it is much better to change it." " No," 
said the young poetess, " after all, it is my poem ! " 

Of course, one must not get into the way of 
doing everything in a slapdash amateur fashion. 
One ought to have two or three things — one's 
work in the world, for instance, which one does 
well. But when it comes to filling one's leisure, 
there is no reason why one should not amuse 
oneself by doing a thing badly, if one cannot do 
it better. It is a great thing to have a hobby, 
and a variety of hobbies. 

I myself strum infamously on a piano, and 
draw in pen and ink with more zeal than accom- 
plishment. I have no illusions as to the merit 
of these performances, and at the age of fifty 
there is not the slightest hope of improvement; 



Work and Play 369 

but I cannot see for the life of me why I should 
not continue to play and draw while it amuses 
me. One cannot always be writing and reading, 
and it is important that one should learn to 
waste a little time pleasantly to oneself, even if 
one's amusements give no pleasure to others. It 
is very important, as one gets older, not to lose 
the habit of playing; one cannot romp about and 
climb trees and play games which involve jump- 
ing; but one can always amuse oneself, and it 
need not be in a rational manner. To want to 
play shows a wholesome appetite and zest for 
life; and if possible one should encourage one- 
self in early life to make things. There is an 
elderly lady of my acquaintance who takes an 
immense and unflagging interest in life. She has 
a room which she calls her Bindery, in which she 
is always binding volumes. They are dreadfully 
badly done as a rule. One can't open one of her 
masterpieces without breaking the back; and 
when one has done so, several quires of paper 
fall out. The lettering is all wrong, and there 
is seldom quite room on the back for the title. 
She is wholly aware of the absurd results which 
she produces, and is more amused by them than 
anyone else; but she gets a great deal of delight 
out of the pursuit, and says that the occupation 
is the real background of her life. 

To desire to make something is a perfectly 
natural human instinct, and I have always held 
that all children ought to be taught a handicraft. 

24 



370 Along the Road 

It would be well if this could be continued at 
school, but it is not very easy to organise, espe- 
cially when we make it a rule — not a wholly wise 
rule — that all boys should play games, whether 
they can do it or not. I do not think that all 
games can be omitted even for boys who have no 
aptitude for them; one must provide exercise and 
open air for all; but when it comes to a game 
like cricket, which is essentially an idle game for 
all but boys who can bowl and bat, and wastes 
time more than any other game, it does seem to 
me rather absurd that a boy who has, say, a taste 
for carpentering should not be allowed to indulge 
his taste, and give up cricket when it becomes 
clear that he cannot under any circumstances 
become proficient at it. 

We are a curiously conventional nation in 
many respects. It is taken for granted by many 
people that games are not a waste of time, how- 
ever ill you play them, and that reading is not 
a waste of time however badly and unintelligently 
you may read. I was in the company the other 
'day of an elderly gentleman, when a discussion 
was going on as to the advisability of opening 
a museum on Sundays. ^ly old friend said 
pleasantly that he did not think it should be 
opened. " To speak frankly," he added, " I do 
not think it is good for people to look at things; 
it is a waste of time ; they get on very well with- 
out it, and it only unsettles their minds." " But 
that is an argument," I said, " not against open- 



Work and Play 371 

ing this nmsenm on SiiTulays, but in favour of 
the immediate abolition of all museums." " No," 
he said, " I think that professed students ought 
to go to museums, but no one else — it is mere 
dilettante rubbish." At which point I meekly 
desisted from argument, because it is no good 
arguing with people who have private decalogues 
of their own. 

My own theory of life is so wholly ditferent, 
that T find it hard to say how much I disagree. 
I believe that everyone ought to have work to 
do, and ought to enjoy work; but I think that 
many of us do too much work, and have not 
nearly enough leisure. The difficulty of chang- 
ing all that is because we have developed a false 
habit of occupation. We take it for granted that 
if a person is occupied in something definite, he 
is well employed. I am a busy man myself, and 
have many engagements. I reflect with pain 
sometimes what an extraordinary amount of good 
time is ill consumed in things like committees, 
in which details of a wholly unimportant kind 
are discussed at enormous length, just because 
they are the only part of the business that most 
of those present understand. But the result is 
that for many of us life slips away without 
living. We know little of the wonderful world 
around us; the wholesome sights of nature 
the endless ingenuities and activities of men, 
frankly, do not interest us. At Cambridge, for 
instance, I have sometimes been almost appalled 



372 Along the Road 

by the way in which undergraduates talk of the 
absolute impossibility of taking a walk. They 
walk, talk, eat, play a game, and the day is 
full ; but a walk means nothing to see and nothing 
to do. 

And so I come back to my original proposition, 
which amounts to this: that we ought to organise 
leisure more liberally and more sensibly. We 
have a dreary belief that it is everyone's duty 
to get on, to make money, to win consideration, 
to be respected. I am not sure that these am- 
bitions are not absolutely wrong; a man ought 
to have work and to enjoy it, and after that he 
ought to desire to be innocently happy, and to 
be loved; consideration and respect generally 
mean that a man is thought to know how to 
secure and how to retain a larger share of the 
conveniences of life than other people, and to be 
in no hurry to part with them. 

And thus the old proverb seems to me to be 
one of those dull and selfish maxims which repre- 
sent the worst side of the English character- 
its want of originality and lightness and joy and 
kindly intercourse. It is a commercial maxim 
through and through. A proverb is generally said 
to be the wisdom of many and the wit of one; 
but in this case it seems to me to be little more 
than the stupidity of many and the cynicism of 
one. 



LIVELINESS 

I WAS talking to a friend the other day, and said 
in the course of the talk that on the whole the 
most useful people I knew were the people who had 
chosen the work which amused them most. My 
friend took exception to this, and said that it 
was rather a light-minded and jaunty view of 
life, and that it left out of sight great purposes 
and serious effort and devoted self-sacrifice. But 
I stuck to my point. I had not said that these 
lives were the finest and the most heroic, but 
that they were on the whole the most useful. T 
added that I believed that he agreed with me in 
realitj', but that he probably attached a different 
sense to the word amusement. The people I 
meant were those who did their work with a 
kind of radiant enjoyment and gaiety, because 
they liked the idea of it and the detail of it; 
and that the men who worked in that spirit pro- 
duced a very infectious result on the people who 
worked with and under them; imported a sort 
of zest and gusto into the whole business, which 
carried everything before it, overcame difficulties, 
made light of disagreeable incidents, and faced 
373 



374 Along- the Road 

anxieties with a kind of cheerful courage which 
deprived cares of half their terror. I said that 
such people reminded me of that pleasant text 
(which, b}^ the way, I have never induced any of 
my clerical friends to preach upon, though I 
have often suggested it), "And David danced 
before tlie Lord with all his might." It is true 
that Michal despised David for dancing so 
eagerly; but Michal was no doubt one of those 
intensely conventional people who value propriety 
above everything; and David was certainly right. 
Such a temper as this seems to me to be not 
in the least inconsistent with effort and serious- 
ness and unselfishness; and what I like about it 
most is that it does not cloud life, as undue 
seriousness is apt to do, with a sort of heavy 
solemnity. I value solemnity in its place; but 
it ought to come rarely and impressively, on 
great occasions and at important moments. It 
is of no use to pretend that life is not a serious 
business: if one goes to work grinning and gig- 
gling, one is apt to get a little nip from circum- 
stances which remind one that levity is not al- 
ways appropriate. But I think that, for all that, 
life ought to be lived in a gay temper, as far as 
possible. Life is full of interesting, exciting, and 
amusing things, and one is meant to enjoy them 
heartily. People, their ways, their sayings, and 
their opinions, are highly entertaining. It is 
pleasant to know beforehand exactly what line 
a man is sure to take, what familiar and un- 



Liveliness 375 

necessary caution he is going to display, what 
threadbare phrases and arguments he is going 
to employ; it is as satisfactory as the striking 
of a clock at the appointed hour; and not less 
entertaining are the wholly unexpected things 
which people do and say, entirely at variance 
with all their principles and opinions. To ap- 
prehend all this and to enjoy it is the essence 
of humour; and it is a perpetual refreshment to 
perceive it and relish it. 

But if a man, on the other hand, takes up his 
work with a pompous sense of rectitude, with a 
belief that he is bound to be always correcting 
and impro\ing and uplifting people, what a 
dreary business it often is! I do not know any- 
thing which more takes the wind out of one's 
sails, which brings such a sense of unnatural 
constraint with it, as being much with people 
who are alw^ays disapproving. I am not advo- 
cating a cynical and flippant treatment of every- 
thing, and still less an absence of decent and 
seemly reticence in talk. Xor do I at all mean 
that everything should be regarded as a joke; I 
do not know anything more trying, or, indeed, 
more depressing, than incessant trifling with 
everything. But what I value is a light touch, 
a sort of darting quality, like sun and breeze, a 
changeful mood, amused and interested and seri- 
ous by turns, responsive and sympathetic. Of 
course, everyone cannot give this : it is a great and 
unusual charm. But everyone can resolve that, 



376 Along the Road 

whatever happens, they will not blight and inter- 
rupt the movement of others' minds, will not bore 
others with their own preoccupations, or smear 
their own worries into the gaps of every talk. 

I do not think that one's own work is a thing 
to dwell upon in the comi)any of others ; but the 
people who do their work in a light and inter- 
ested way have no temptation to do that. They 
enjoy their work, and when it is done they are 
pleasantly weary of it, and want to go on to 
something else. I used to think that Roddie, the 
beloved collie of whom I have written, and whose 
loss I still mourn, was an ideal example of how 
to take life. One would not have thought that 
an afternoon walk was such a tremendous affair. 
But Roddie rushed off with a peal of joyful barks, 
danced round one, was intensely interested, on 
coming out of the drive, to see if we would turn 
to the left or the right. Whichever way one 
turned, there came another loud peal of barks, 
as though to say, " Right again ! The very turn 
I would have chosen." Then he settled down to 
his own amusements, peeping into hedgerows, 
looking through gates, discovering a hundred 
exciting scents everywhere; and then the walk 
over, when one turned into the gate, there came 
another set of jubilant barks, as though to say, 
"Why, we have got back liome after all! You 
really are the cleverest of guides." And then 
came a delicious nap, beginning instantly, in his 
own corner, under the card-table. 



Liveliness 377 

Of course, we cannot all hope to have the 
supreme tact and sympathy of a dog. Clever 
and useful and important as we are, that is be- 
yond our powers I But we can get nearer to this 
sort of light-heartedness by practice, even by 
admiring it and desiring it. 

But my serious-minded friend would have none 
of this; he said, not very profoundly, that we 
were bound to spend and be spent for others. 
Of course we are! Who can avoid it? But we 
need not spend ourselves drearily and self-con- 
sciously; and the people who do so because they 
like doing it, spontaneously, and because they are 
interested in others, are far more effective — at 
least in my experience — than the people who do 
it from a strict sense of duty and with a sigh. 
T do not mean to say that thei:e is not a very 
fine and silent kind of self-sacrifice, which people 
can make and do make. But when I think of 
the great Christian workers whom I have known 
— my father, for Instance, Bishop Lightfoot, 
Bishop Westcott — they worked because they en- 
joyed their work with a tremendous zest, because 
it seemed to them the most delightful and inter- 
esting work in the world, and from the purest 
and simplest pleasure in doing a job well. And 
then, again, I think of men like Charles Kings- 
ley and Bishop Wilkinson — men of deep sorrows 
and sharp anxieties — whose work lay more in 
personal and pastoral regions. These men did 
not work because they felt bound to do so, but 



37^ Along the Road 

because they were intensely and incessantly inter- 
ested in the problems of other people, and longed 
to give them some of the joyful peace which they 
themselves enjoyed. And thus I come back to 
what I said at first, that the most useful people, 
the people who make most difference to others, 
are not the people who do their work on a theory 
and for sound reasons, but the people who act 
on a sort of generous instinct, and who find the 
employment of their force and energy delightful, 
and, in the best and truest sense, amusing. 

Of course, one knows of work reluctantly un- 
dertaken and faithfully fulfilled; and that is a 
splendid thing too. ^' To be afraid of a thing and 
yet to do it, is what makes the prettiest kind of 
man " — as the brisk Alan Breck said to David 
Balfour. But Alan was all on the side of the 
spirited life. He liked danger, because it gave 
him a sense of excitement, and brought his powers 
of inventiveness into use. And what I am really 
pleading for is that people should not allow their 
lives to become dull. It is dulness which takes 
the edge off things, and discourages the young 
aspirant. We cannot all keep our animal spirits 
up, and we do not deceive others by per- 
petually making bad jokes ; but we can be on the 
look-out for what other people are thinking and 
feeling; we can applaud if we cannot perform, 
and smile if we cannot be convulsed with 
laughter. I have a delightful friend at Cam- 
bridge, whose interest in life is wholly unabated, 



Liveliness 379 

in spite of his snowy locks. I sat next him in 
Hall not long ago, at his own College. I men- 
tioned a subject which was going to be discussed 
that evening at a meeting I was to attend. 
^' Ah ! " he said, " that 's very interesting. Now 
I should like to take a line of my own!" He 
began to indicate one or two arguments. " Ha! " 
he suddenly cried, " this is really very good, much 
to the point. I must just jot this down ! " He 
seized a menit and got out a pencil, and con- 
tinued to take notes of his own conversation; 
and at the end he gave me a little smile. ^' I am 
afraid I have talked too much ! I often do ; but 
I '11 just take this card away with me,'- — he 
slipped it into his pocket as he spoke, — " I dare 
say it will turn out useful; you see, I am 
interested in most things ! " 



PRIDE 

I HEARD a sermon the other clay, which was both 
beautiful and forcible, on the subject of pride. 
The preacher said that pride was a kind of dis- 
loyalty to God, and that pride was the sin of 
the man who would not ride with the troop, or 
be one of the rank and file, but would take his 
own solitary and wilful way; and that it was 
in a treasured and complacent solitariness that 
pride consisted. He said it was as though the 
mill-stream were too dicrnified to ffo through the 
mill, and that we must be prepared to go through 
the mill, and do the useful, obvious work. T 
think that was all true, and that a sort of soli- 
tariness, a desiring to do things in one's own way, 
an incapacity of working with other people, is 
all a part of pride. I remember a man who had 
been for a time in a Benedictine house as a novice 
telling me his reasons for not continuing there. 
He said with a smile, " I soon found out that 
the only monastery of which I could be a member, 
was a monastery of which I was also abbot I " 
That was a frank confession of pride. But I 
think that there is a great deal more in pride 
380 



Pride 381 

than that, and that it would not have been at 
the head of all the deadly sins if it were merely 
the sin of wilfulness or disobedience or self-con- 
fidence. Tf we look at the other side of the ques- 
tion, it surely cannot be that God demands that 
all work should be done in a timid, half-hearted, 
uncei'tain spirit; that we should collapse in the 
presence of difficulties and disfavour; that we 
should let evil and meanness and selfishness go 
unresisted for fear of taking a line of our own, 
or of being thought to be superior. 

And, again, pride is not the same as com- 
placency. I have known men who were very 
humble about themselves, very conscious of their 
failures, and yet very proud both in upholding 
their own ideal and contemning the ideals of 
other people. And what increases the difficulty 
is that pride is almost the only sin which can 
be coupled with words of praise. We can speak 
of proper pride and noble pride — we cannot speak 
of proper envy or noble covetousness. And, of 
course, the reason why it is so deadly a fault is 
because it is so subtle, so hard to detect, so easy, 
not only to overlook in oneself, but even to ad- 
mire. If a man says of another that he is too 
proud to do anything mean or underhand, he 
intends to praise him, and a man might well be 
proud of a pride which prevented his joining 
in something petty or deceitful ; a kind of pride 
is at the bottom of the feeling noWesse ohlige, A 
man who was too proud to confess poverty, or to 



382 Along the Road 

deplore his own failures, would not necessarily 
be a sinner. 

We should all agree that a man who was 
patently and obviously proud of his birth or of 
his wealth w^as on the wrong tack. But a man 
might be proud of his school or his regiment or 
his profession or his children, and be only the 
better for it. It is very difficult to disentangle 
the truth about such kinds of pride, and to see 
why one is wrong and the other is right. T 
suppose that it reall}" depends upon the personal 
attitude. I mean that if a man is conscious, saj^ 
that his regiment is a good one, that the tone 
is keen, sound, friendly, gallant, and duty-loving, 
so that he is thankful to be a member of it, and 
anxious to do all he can to contribute to its wel- 
fare, it is a wholesome pride. Whereas if he is 
proud only that it is a smart, rich, well-bred, 
dashing regiment, envied by vulgar people, and 
fashionable, it is the wrong sort of pride, because 
he looks upon these qualities as somehow in- 
creasing his own reputation, and claims as credit- 
able what are only the gifts of fortune. Pride 
is, in fact, a hard and confident belief in oneself, 
w^hich leads one to take success as a sort of 
natural right, and further makes one despise and 
judge hardly the performances and aims of other 
people. 

And thus it is a quality which stands in the 
way of progress and peace, because it leads men 
to be unwilling to compromise, or to be con- 



Pride 383 

siderate, or to do anything except on their own 
terms. 

But, as I said, the danger of it is that it is 
so terribly hard to detect in oneself, because it 
masquerades as an angel of light. A man may 
learn to give up much for the sake of duty or 
honour, to make allowances for other people, to 
use them as far as he can, to admit good- 
fa umouredly enough their good points, and yet 
he may have a serene confidence that after all 
his way is the best, and that it is only a want 
of perception and reason and sense that makes 
others fail to agree with him. I have known 
frank, friendly, good-natured, effective people, 
with whom one could never yet feel on an equal- 
ity. They were patient and kindly and reason- 
able enough, and yet one felt all the time that 
there was an inner stubbornness about them, and 
that for all their kindness they were deliberately 
judging one for being wrong-headed and weak- 
minded and ineffective and sentimental. But the 
difficulty is this : suppose one perceives or believes 
another man to be mean or vulgar or unjust or 
unscrupulous, is one bound to try to persuade 
oneself that he is the opposite, or to assert it? 
It seems to me as absurd as if one was bound to 
try to think ugly people beautiful or fat people 
slim. And may one not be thankful or grateful 
if one is not ugly or fat? Is it pride to recog- 
nise such advantages as one has, or to be glad 
that one has them? The answer is that one can- 



3^4 Along the Road 

not, if one has perceptions at all, be blind to 
other people's faults and disadvantages. To pre- 
tend it would be to be deliberately hypocritical. 
The mischief begins when self-comparison begins, 
and when one thinks of other peoj)le's failings 
merely to accentuate the comfortable sense of 
one's own virtues; because the natural sequel is 
that one becomes blind to one's own faults. 
There is no need whatever to be for ever morbidly 
dwelling upon and exaggerating one's own faults 
— that often ends in a kind of complacent hu- 
mility which is the most dangerous disguise of 
pride. But one must resolutely perceive and 
know that one's own way of going to work is 
not necessarily the best. It may be the best way 
or the only way for oneself, and one has a perfect 
right, indeed a duty, to do the best work one 
can under the best conditions one can secure. 
But if one sees other influences more potent, other 
people doing more good in their way, other people 
receiving good from methods which one does not 
like or from people whom one does not admire, 
one must not try to interfere with it or to be 
jealous of it or to belittle it, but to be sincerely 
thankful that, by whatever means, the thing is 
done. Take the case of a w^riter: supposing that 
he sees that another writer, whom he may think 
silly or vulgar or cheap or melodramatic, is better 
liked, more read, more attended to than himself, 
he must be glad that it is so; he must not try 
to cast cold water upon the other's work or to 



Pride 385 



call it inferior or twaddlinfir. He need not desert 



&• 



bis own way of work, but he must be content to 
recognise that the other is doing his work in the 
best way that he can, and that his admirers ad- 
mire him for good and sufficient reasons; if he 
is a clergyman or a schoolmaster, and sees other 
clergy and teachers more effective on different 
lines, he must not sneer and shrug his shoulders, 
and say that they sacrifice truth to impressive- 
ness and strictness to popularity. He must not 
be above taking hints from them, but he must be 
glad that somehow or other the right kind of 
effect is being produced. Pride comes in if one 
believes one's own way to be the only way or 
the best way, because the moment one feels that, 
one begins to measure all natures by one's own, 
and to feel not that man is made after the likeness 
of God, but that God must somehow or other 
resemble oneself, and be guiding the world on 
the lines of which one approves. 

The reason why pride is so deadly is because 
it makes one incapable of learning or of perceiv- 
ing one's failures and shortcomings. One trans- 
lates a failure of one's own into the stupidity or 
the perverseness of other people, and instead of 
taking a misfortune or a calamity as showing one 
frankly and plainly that one has been stupid or 
lazy or careless, one takes it with a kind of 
patient solemnity, as intended to minister to one's 
own sense of ineffable importance. One thinks of 
it as the dent of the graver upon the gem, when 

25 



386 Along the Road 

it is often no more than the throwing of the 
cracked potsherd upon the rubbish heap. 

Experience is for many of us a process of 
emptying, of bringing us to our senses, of show- 
ing us that there is but little we are permitted 
to do. We start gay and confident, with a strong 
sense of our good intentions, our refinement, our 
perceptiveness, our uncommonness, and we have 
got to learn, most of us, that it does not count 
for so much after all; that we cannot hope to 
have a great effect upon the world, but that we 
must be thankful to be shown our place, and be 
grateful for our little bit of work. We are not 
meant to be hopeless and despondent about our- 
selves, to grovel abjectly in a sense of feebleness, 
to welter in ineffectiveness, of course. But we 
are meant to know that even if we are inside the 
wicket-gate, we are yet a very long way from the 
celestial city, and that we are better occupied in 
minding the road, and facing the goblins, than 
in drawing imaginary elevations of the King's 
palace, in arranging who will enter and why, in 
anticipating our own triumph and the blowing 
of the heavenly trumpets. It is often when a 
man least expects it that he finds his feet are 
on the steps of jacinth, and when he is most 
aware of his own failure to do what he might 
have done, most overwhelmed by the murmurs of 
regret and disappointment, that the music of the 
melodious notes breaks serenely on the misty air. 



ALLEGORIES 

There is no doubt that the pleasure felt by 
ordinary people in parables and allegories is a 
very general one, and has its roots far down in 
human nature. In its simplest form it is the 
same pleasure which a child has, say, in a 
wooden figure of a cow or horse, which is not 
only a toy, but a box, and can open and have 
things kept inside it. A parable is just like that : 
it is a pretty thing in itself, but it has a use 
besides, and real things can be laid away there. 
It is a mental pleasure of a simple kind ; one has 
the story first and then one has the pleasure of 
fitting it to real events and facts, and of per- 
ceiving how it corresponds. It is the same thing 
that makes a savage tell stories about the sun 
and moon and stars, the husband and wife and 
their inconveniently large family; and it may be 
noted how constantly little children, who draw a 
picture of a scene, tend to put a human face to 
the sun, who comes peeping over the edge of the 
world; and just in the same way the figures of 
beasts, and the curves and lines of human furni- 
ture and human ornaments were very anciently 
387 



388 Along the Road 

attached to the constellations. It is the joy of 
detecting resemblances which underlies it all; one 
likes to see that a pollarded beech-tree is like a 
kind of man holding up a bunch of strange horns 
on his head, with terrifying, unwinking eyes, and 
a great mouth prepared for shouting. For how 
many years back have even I, who am old enough 
to know better, been pleased to perceive that the 
overlapping of two curtains above a red blind, in 
a certain house where I often stay, makes, in 
combination with the curtain-rings, a sort of red- 
bladed sword with a curious twisted hilt! An- 
other odder thing still is that in the depths of 
the mind the thing is not only like a sword; it 
is a sword, and there 's an end of it. 

And then after those first pleasures of resem- 
blance, one gets a little further on, and begins 
to see deeper still ; and things become likenesses, 
not of other things, but of mental ideas. The 
ivy that grows so fast and stretches out such soft 
green innocent tendrils across the window-pane 
becomes like a fault which grows pleasantly upon 
a man, and yet will darken all his life if it has 
its way; the daisy with its open, homely little 
face looking up out of the grass, is the simple 
innocence that takes things as they come, and is 
quietly happy in a comfortable manner, whatever 
is going on. 

And then we come to see that most things, 
indeed, that surround us are, in a very deep and 
wonderful fashion, types and symbols of what we 



Allegories 389 

are and of what we either may become, if we 
take good heed, or of what we may fail to be- 
come, if we go on our careless way, learning 
nothing from what happens to us except how to 
be disappointed and impatient. For the sum and 
essence of all allegories is a noble kind of pa- 
tience, that lives under laws of time and space, 
and yet has a great life of its own, which events 
can help or hinder, according as we view them 
and receive them; and we learn, perhaps very 
late in life, to distinguish between the things that 
it is good for us to keep — sweet memories and 
faithful affections and hopes of goodness not yet 
realised — and the things which we ought to throw 
awa}^ as soon as we can — old grudges and poison- 
ous recollections, and the useless burdens with 
which, out of a fearful sort of prudence, we weight 
our uncertain steps. 

I do not think there is a more beautiful or a 
happier gift than the power of seeing past the 
surface of things into their inner realities. Of 
course we must not be always drawing morals 
for the sake of other people, because then we grow 
tiresome, and like a wind that goes on turning 
over the pages of one's book in a persistent way, 
as if eager to get to the end. Mr. Interpreter 
in the Pilgrim's Progress, with all his similitudes 
and morals, must have been a rather overpowering 
person to live with, when the pilgrims had gone 
on their way, with pills and cordials, and the 
family sate down to luncheon! Perhaps he said 



39^ Along the Road 

to bis wife: " ^Iy dear, that room full of spiders 
was very convenient this morning to draw a moral 
from, but it really does not reflect much credit 
upon your housemaid I" And T have often won- 
dered what the private thoughts and occupations 
were of the two men, one of whom had to cast 
water on the fire to put it out, and the other who 
had to cast oil secretly upon the flames. I can 
imagine their comparing notes and agreeing that 
their posts were rather unsatisfactory, and not 
likely to lead to anything! 

Then there is another thing that has often struck 
me about allegories ; and that is that they are on 
the whole so discouraging. The percentage of suc- 
cessful candidates for the heavenly honours is so 
extremely small! The man goes upon his quest 
backed by all sorts of wonderful powers, and he 
makes such foolish mistakes, and finds such a 
record of failures — the bones in the grass, the 
careless predecessors turned into pigs or pea- 
cocks, the foolish wayfarers being put into a 
hole at the side of the hill — that the wonder is 
that any one ever gets through at all! One de- 
sires a very different kind of allegory, a race like 
the Caucus-race in Alice in Wonderland, where 
every one wins and every one has a prize. 

But as a wise friend of mine said to me the 
other day, if one must think of percentages at 
all, it may be just the other way round. The per- 
verse and greedy have fallen into snares and pits, 
and they may be the tiny percentage who do not 



Allegories 391 

get through. But all the while an endless stream 
of pilgrims have been marching past, and pass- 
ing on, and the walls and parapets of the heavenly 
city are full of smiling persons who look over, 
and welcome the tired souls who struggle in with 
gladness and astonishment, under the melodious 
notes of the silver trumpets, hardly daring to 
believe that they are actually there. 

And I am sure that on the whole one of the 
things that hurts us most and keeps us back, is 
that we will continue to think of trials and sor- 
rows and misfortunes as things that are actually 
there, injuring us and threatening us, when they 
are as dead as Giant Despair. Evil is, of course, 
horribly powerful; but it is also strangely unreal. 
Half the torture of a mistake is the misery of 
considering what other people will think of it 
all, as if that made any difference! The mistake 
was made, and we trust, now that we are wiser, 
that we shall not make it again. What ought to 
vex us is that we were weak enough or foolish 
enough to make it, not that other people will 
blame us. It was a very cynical man who said 
that the first commandment of all was " Thou 
shalt not be found out." We may be thankful 
indeed that all we have done and thought is not 
known to others, because their disapproving looks 
would be a sad and mournful reflection of our 
own self-displeasure ; while, if we come to a better 
mind, it is a good and wholesome thing to forget 
our mistakes, and not to encourage them to hang 



392 Along the Road 

round us like a cloud of poisonous flies. But it 
is essential that we should find ourselves out and 
have no dull pretences. There is a striking little 
story I once read — T have forgotten where — of a 
man entertaining his own conscience. The man 
— that is, his conventional and complacent self 
— gets a good meal read}^, but his conscience comes 
in tired and woe-begone, cannot taste the food, 
and puts his head down upon his hands. The 
man says that it is hardly courteous to come so 
ill-dressed and be so unsociable. The conscience 
says : ^^ I cannot help it. I am quite worn out. 
If you knew what I know, you could not smile 
and eat." Then the man says patronisingly : " Oh, 
I dare say there are plenty of people who have 
done far worse; it does not do to think too much 
of these things. Least said is soonest mended." 
And then the conscience looks up, and says, 
" Well, let me remind you of something," and 
he tells him a tale of old ingratitude and un- 
kindness which spoils the man's appetite, and 
makes him get up from the table in a rage. I 
forget how the story went on, but they settled 
that they would try to work better together. 

But if there is a danger in being content to 
plod along, and take things dully as they come, 
without looking forwards or backwards, there is 
also a danger in allegorising overmuch, and get- 
ting to regard one's own little pilgrimage as the 
one central fact of importance in the world. We 
have to remember that it is a great thing to be 



Allegories 393 

allowed to go on pilgrimage at all, that Mr. Gaius, 
for all bis hospitality, has other people to enter- 
tain beside ourselves, and that we cannot order 
rooms in the House Beautiful or use it as an 
agreeable residence. There are very strong things 
all about us, both for and against us, and we are 
lucky if we slip through unhurt. 

The most dreadful fact of all is that it is easy, 
if we are selfish and romantic together, to imagine 
that we are like Christian or Faithful, while all 
the time we may be like Ignorance, sauntering in 
a bypath, or like the young woman whose name 
was Dull, or we may even be bearing still more 
disreputable names. We must be sure that we 
really are on pilgrimage, not merely being carried 
in a comfortable train through exciting and in- 
teresting places. It is not a pilgrimage which we 
can take with a Baedeker in our hands, nor can 
we hope that we can do the journey entirely on the 
Delectable IMountains. There are dull stretches 
of road which w^e do well to beguile with fine 
memories and hopes; while in the dark valley 
itself, with the hobgoblins howling in the smoke, 
the less we can think of them, and the more we 
can remember our glimpse through the Shepherd's 
perspective-glass of the city, so much the better for 
ourselves and for all that walk in our company. 



PUBLICITY AND PRIVACY 

I WAS sitting the other day with an old friend, 
who had called upon me in my rooms at Cam- 
bridge, when a telegram was brought in. I read 
it, apologising, and then said, showing it to him, 
" I only wonder that it can pay to do this to any 
extent!" It was a wire from a very up-to-date 
daily paper, requesting to know my opinion on 
some current topic, and enclosing a double pre- 
paid reply form. 

My friend, I must first say, is an elderly man, 
scholarly, fastidious, extremely refined, a con- 
siderable student, and very retiring by nature, 
but with a fine natural courtesy which makes 
him on the too rare occasions when I see 
him the most charming of companions. If his 
eye ever falls on these words, which is not likely, 
he will not take umbrage at this description, 
wliich is literally and precisely true. 

He read the telegram; while I drew out a stylo- 
graph, and asking him to excuse me for a minute, 
began to write. He stared at me for a moment, 
across the jjink paper. Then he said, in a tone 
of the deepest amazement, '' You are surely not 

394 



Publicity and Privacy 395 

going to ansicer that?" "Yes," I said, "I am 
— why not ? " " You mean to sa}^," he said, " that 
3'ou are going to allow your name to appear, with 
your opinion on this question, in a daily paper, 
to be read by hundreds of readers? It is simply 
inconceivable to me! and just because an editor 
asks you ! " 

" Yes," I said, " I am certainly going to answer 
it. It is a question on which I hold perfectly 
definite views, and I am not at all sorry to have 
an opportunity of stating them. I don't, I confess, 
quite see why my opinion is wanted, nor why it 
should be of the smallest interest to anyone to 
know what I think about it. But if anyone does 
wish to know, I am prepared to tell him my 
opinion, just as I should tell you, if you asked 
me." 

" Well," he said, " I must say that you sur- 
prise me — I am very much surprised. I would n't 
do that for a hundred pounds." 

" I wish," I said, ••' that you would tell me 
exactly and frankly why you should object? If 
you have an opinion on a subject, and are not 
ashamed of your opinion, why should you not 
state it?" 

" I really don't quite know," he said ; " I don't 
think I can give any logical reason; it is more 
a matter of feeling. I am afraid I should think 
it — you don't mind my using the word? — terribly 
vulgar. It seems to me against all my instincts 
of privacy and propriety to do a thing like this. 



39^ Along the Road 

T dare say I am very old-fasliioiied ; but it seems 
to me impertinent tbat you should be asked, and 
quite dreadful that you should consent, to gratify 
a trivial curiosity." 

" Well," I said, " I fully realise that your feel- 
ing is a much more delicate and refined one than 
my own ; I look at it iu a very commonplace light. 
I should like people to take the same view of this 
question as I take myself. I don't expect to con- 
vert many people to my way of thinking; but if 
anyone is likely to regard my opinion, and to 
modify his own in consequence of knowing mine, I 
am only too happy to make him a present of mine. 
I do not see that it is worse than writing a signed 
article on a subject, or a book. In fact, I think it 
is less open to objection ; for when I write an ar- 
ticle or a book, I sell my opinions, or at least offer 
them for sale; while this is wholly gratuitous." 

" Yes," he said, " I see that your view is quite 
consistent and probably sensible. But that any 
editor should feel at liberty to rush into your 
room like this with a question, and that you 
should feel bound in any way to allow your 
opinions to be made public, seems to me entirely 
improper and undignified." 

" Why," I said, " I only regard it as a legitimate 
extension of conversation ! In a conversation one 
can make one's opinions audible to about a dozen 
people; in a newspaper one can make them audible 
to about a hundred thousand people — and the 
more the merrier ! " 



Publicity and Privacy 397 

My friend gave a sort of sigh, and said, 
"Perhaps you are right/' in a melancholy tone; 
but I conld see that he was both puzzled and 
distressed. 

When he left me I began to think over the 
question again, and to search out mj spirits, to 
see if in any corner of my mind I could detect 
any lurking sense of impropriety in the proceed- 
ing. But I can find none. 

I have a very strong feeling about one's right 
to privacy — indeed, I think that one has a per- 
fect right to refuse such requests as these. One 
may have formed no opinion on a subject, or one 
may not wish one's opinion to be known. I cer^ 
tainly do not think that anyone has a right to 
claim to call upon one or to demand to see one. 
I very much resent the kind of letter I sometimes 
get, which says : " I have been reading one of your 
books with interest, and as I am passing through 
Cambridge to-morrow, I shall venture to call and 
make your acquaintance." I think that this 
savours of imfjertinence, because it may not be 
convenient or pleasant to me to receive a stranger- 
on such terms. In such a case a man ought to 
obtain a proper introduction from a mutual 
friend. But, on the other hand, I should always 
welcome a friendly letter about a book, or a civil 
question about a statement made in a book. 
That is a perfectly legitimate thing to do, though 
I have a right, if I choose, not to answer it. 
But to claim one's time and attention and 



398 Along the Road 

presence is a very differeDt matter, especially if 
one's consent is taken for granted. 

Of course a writer in whose writings there is 
a certain autobiographical element is bound to 
be criticised, as I have often been, for having no 
proper sense of privacy and intimacy. Critics 
speak of it as though it were like substituting a 
plate-glass front to one's house for a brick one, 
and having one's meals and going to bed in public. 
I do not contest that opinion ; and if a man feels 
that an intime book is indelicate, he has every 
right to say so. But I think it is very difficult 
to give a good reason for the objection. I myself 
value the sense of intimacy and personality in a 
book above all other qualities. The appeal of all 
poets, dramatists, and essayists is based entirely 
upon their intimacy. It seems to me that there 
is all the difference between telling the world 
what you choose to tell it, and letting people see 
and investigate for themselves. The only objec- 
tion I make to autobiographical books is that 
they are sometimes dull — pompous, complacent, 
heavy, self-satisfied. The more that a man like 
Ruskin deigns to tell me about himself, the better 
I am pleased ; but I am sometimes frankly bored 
by pious ^neas and his adventures. It all de- 
pends upon whether the recital is egotistical, 
whether the writer takes himself too seriously. 
If, on the other hand, one feels that a man is 
intensely interested in his experiences, not only 
because they are his own, but because they are 



Publicity and Privacy 399 

just the things that happen to him, the things 
he knows and cares about, the impression is de- 
lightful. I had ten times rather have a man's 
account of his own vivid actual thoughts and 
adventures, than his dull and faulty imaginations 
and fancies. I want to know what life is like 
to other people, and what they think about it all, 
not their platitudes and melodramas. It seems 
to me that one of the blessed results of the multi- 
plication of books and newspapers is that one 
can talk to a larger audience. I like talking to 
people, and hearing them talk, if they will only 
say what they really think, and not put me 
off with conventional remarks about things in 
which neither of us takes the smallest interest. 
Stale gossip, old stories, the weather, the last 
railway accident, cautious and incomplete views 
of politics — these are the heavy matters, litur- 
gically recited, which make conversation insup- 
portable. But if a companion has interests, views, 
prejudices, preferences, and if he will discuss 
them, not merely state them, and show a decent 
interest in one's own views, then any talk becomes 
interesting. I think that writers on current 
topics should aim at being just as frank and 
open in their writings as they would be in talk 
with a trusted friend. And the more that one 
trusts people, and listens with courtesy and fair- 
ness to their views, the better for us all. No 
one person can form a complete and comprehen- 
sive judgment of life and its issues; the only 



400 Along the Road 

way to arrive at a solution is to balance and 
weigh the views of other people; and it is a 
wholesome and a bracing thing to know that men 
whom one respects — and even men whom one does 
not respect — may disagree with one, wholly and 
entirely, on almost all subjects of importance. 

I had a very pleasant adventure the other day. 
I went to speak to an audience in London, most 
of whom, I afterwards learned, had read some of 
my books. I can only say that it was one of the 
most comfortable and encouraging experiences I 
have ever had, not because I was satisfied with 
my lecture, but because, from first to last, I really 
felt that I was among friends, and surrounded 
with simple kindness and goodwill. I cannot see 
that any one was the worse for this. It did not 
make me believe that I was a prophet or a teacher ; 
it simply enabled me to feel that we all met on 
grounds of perfectly easy and simple friendliness. 
My friends were quite prepared to listen to any- 
thing I had to say, and I did my best to interest 
them. I got far more than I gave, for we met 
in what the old prayer calls the bond of peace, 
and on grounds of perfectly simple human inter- 
est. I believe that our suspicions and mistrusts 
of one another are really very old and barbarous 
things, primitive inheritances from the time when 
every man had to fight for his own hand. But 
we have come to the threshold of a very different 
era, a time when we must be prepared to give all 
we can, and not simply to take all we can get. 



Publicity and Privacy 401 

The laws of time and space forbid us to live our 
lives in company with the whole world; but we 
can try to believe that the affection and kindness 
we meet with in our own little circles are waiting 
for us on every side; and the more that we can 
step outside of our limitations, and clasp hands 
with unknown friends, the better for us all. 



26 



EXPERIENCE 

It often seems to me a difficult point, illustrat- 
ing the curious fact that the materials of the 
world are so good but so imperfectly adjusted, 
that busy and effective people get too little experi- 
ence out of life, and idle and ineffective people 
get too much. The effective man perceives so 
little of the movement of the mind and thought 
of humanity, because he modifies to such an ex- 
tent the thoughts and dispositions of those with 
whom he comes into contact; they become what 
he expects them to be, and what they feel he 
expects them to be. I have so often seen a mas- 
terful man in contact with submissive people, 
under the impression that he reads them like a 
book, when all he sees is his own reflected light, 
as though the sun were to analyse and despise 
the light of the moon. A really masterful char- 
acter, if it be also even superficially affectionate, 
does seem to me to know so little about humanity 
as a rule. I know, for instance, an enthusiastic 
and ardent admirer of the classics, a schoolmaster, 
who quotes to me triumphantly instances of the 
pathetic interest which his pupils take in the 
402 



Experience 403 

classics, to prove that the classics are, after all, 
the oiih' kind of culture that really appeals to 
the human heart. He does uot know, and I can- 
not tell him, that all the interest he detects is 
simply a submissive and gentle hypocrisy, a desire 
to x^lease and satisfy him, a desperate clinging to 
anything which his pupils know will win his ap- 
proval. And I have, too, in my mind a very 
decisive academical personage, who detects and 
praises business capacities and clear-headed views 
in the minds of the most muddled and unbusiness- 
like of the satellites who agree with him. " Poor 
So-and-so I " I can hear him say. " Of course he 
has not much head for business, but he somehow 
catches the drift of a question, and knows what 
is the right line to follow." 

The effective man is always dealing with things, 
and turning possibilities into facts, and driving 
the machine to such an extent that he cannot 
notice the bits of the road and the sort of land- 
scape through which he is passing; he is so pre- 
occupied with steering his big concern along 
streets, slackening or putting on speed, dodging 
through other vehicles, that he cannot know what 
the faces are that look otit of the upper windows, 
or interpret the life of the by-road or the alley. 
He gets to know something of the quality of 
opposing forces, but nothing of the forces which 
are neither in opposition nor in sympathy. The re- 
snlt is that he overlooks or underrates all the 
vague and beautiful influences, which flow on in- 



404 Along the Road 

rlependently, and which perhaps inan}^ years ago 
gave the very impulse to the movemeut which he 
is now engaged In directing. 

And then, on the other hand, the ineffective, 
restless, spectatorial people get, as I have said, 
too much experience. Their time and energy are 
not taken up with the alert conduct of some 
definite scheme or duty. They see too much and 
know too much of the great torrent of vague 
impulses, and the stagnant expanses of inertia, 
the sickly malarious swamps of morbidity. They 
are too much bewildered by it all, just as the 
effective are not bewildered enough. The reasons 
for inaction multiply about them; they see that 
activity often does little more than stir the sur- 
face without bidding the waters flow; they are 
fastidious about adding one more to the pile of 
failures; they do not see the use of trying to 
define their own inexactness. 

Sometimes, as life goes on, a reversal of these 
positions is brought about. The busy man be- 
comes an extinct volcano, of which the burnt-out 
crater is not even menacing, but only incon- 
venient and perhaps picturesque. He sits bully- 
ing people over the petty and unimportant 
enterprises in which he is still allowed to take 
a share. But the ineffective man sometimes blos- 
soms out into a kindly and gracious creature; 
things have at last become a little plainer, and 
he knows at least where to bestow his sympathy. 
He does not expect a prompt settlement of all 



Experience 405 

conflicting claims, but he knows dinil}^ what he 
desires, and he is on the side of things orderly 
and peaceful, neither contemptuous of movemeut 
nor impatient of delay. 

One sees all this sometimes in the faces of 
people. I know nothing more melancholy than 
the sight of dilapidated force, the fierce gesture 
and the commanding eye with no authority be- 
hind; the truculence, which is merely grotesque 
rudeness, extorting just a momentary and mean- 
ingless deference, and then politely disregarded; 
and yet, on the other hand, the person who has 
never been of much account, but who has been 
affectionate, humble-minded, and patient, gets a 
look of serenity, of contented waiting, which 
transfigures a battered face from within. One 
sees it in the faces of old and tired village people, 
who have done such work as they could ever hope 
to do, and can take life as they find it, with a 
smiling dignity, which is very different from the 
dignity of conscious power, and looks as if some- 
how self had melted out into a patience which 
enjoys rather than endures. 

Very rarely one sees a union of the two, where 
a man has been effective and active, and yet has 
never lost sight of the limits and deficiencies of 
effectiveness, and into whose face comes a light 
not so much of a tired sunset, as the promise of 
a further dawn. 

Women have to bear the stress of this lapse of 
energies even more than men; to an exciting 



4o6 Along the Road 

girlliood succeeds marriage, tlie fierce joys and 
})i'eoccupations of uiotlierhood, the sympathetic 
handling of the varying dispositions of the grow- 
ing family; then the launching awaj^ of the little 
ships begins; the boys settle down to work in 
the world, the girls marry; and quite suddenly, 
sometimes, the wheels stop working, and the 
mother, whose life has been so full of others' 
cares, finds herself in a moment with nothing 
whatever to do but to manage a house, and to 
devote herself to her husband, whose* interests in 
many cases have been rather thrust into the 
shade by the life and problems of the children. 
Or widowhood brings with it a sudden cessation 
of duties; and a woman finds herself obliged to 
make a life of her own, when all along her life 
has been made for her and forced upon her. 

It is useless to say that men and women must 
keep the evening of life in view and plan for it. 
Tliere is often neither time nor taste to do so. 
Hobbies, reading, outlying friendships have all 
been swept away joyfully enough by the rush of 
the vital tide; and of all things the most difficult 
is to construct interests out of trivialities, when 
life has been too full of energies for trivialities 
to have a place at all, except as interruptions to 
the real business of the moment. 

Of course it would be all easy enough if we 
had our fill of life, and the evening were but a 
time of wholesome and comfortable weariness. 
But this natural and normal development is con- 



Experience 4^7 

staiitly broken in upon by untoward circum- 
stance. Illness, bereavement, calamity, come, and 
the flight lapses suddenly in mid-career. Not 
everyone can begin to collect shells or to study 
political economy, when life falls in ruins about 
him. 

It ought to be so plain what to do, and it is, 
as a matter of fact, so difficult and intricate. If 
one could but make some quiet secret investment 
of fancy and hope, which would be there, safe 
and secure, when we are suddenly beggared! The 
figure of Mrs. Leigh in Westivard Ho! so serene 
and gracious, entirely occupied in religious con- 
templation and parental adoration, is an attrac- 
tive one at first, but becomes melodramatic and 
unreal if one looks at it closer. 

I suppose that the over-busy people ought to 
try to clear a little space in their lives, in which 
they may make sure that the arrows of God 
strike home; because the eager, rushing, restless 
life often holds up a shield against reality. It 
is easy to say that they ought to do this, but 
when life is crammed with practical things which 
at all events seem to want doing, it is very hard 
to set aside from one's active time an hour which 
one is not quite sure how to occupy, an hour of 
vague abstraction, which seems merely so much 
time wasted. The case is easier for the people 
whose time is not actively occupied and who are 
over-burdened with fruitless reflection. I received 
the other day a letter from a clever and unhappy 



4o8 Along the Road 

woman, wealthy, childless, widowed, in indifferent 
health, who said that she had no obvious duties, 
and found the enigma of the world press heavily 
upon her. Such a one ought, I think, at what- 
ever cost of distastefulness or boredom, to take 
up a piece of tangible and practical work. Un- 
paid work is not difficult to find, and a task does 
relieve and steady the mind in a wonderful 
manner. 

One does not want experience, real and vital 
experience, to be either on the one hand a casual 
visitor to a mind, like a bird which hops . and 
picks about a lawn, and hardly dints its surface ; 
nor does one, on the other hand, desire it to be 
a weight put over life and flattening it out, like 
a stone that lies upon a grass-plot, crushing the 
grass into a pale and sickly languor, and afford- 
ing a home for loathly and shadow-loving insects. 
But it is hard to find sufficient initiative to cor- 
rect faults of temperament. It is so easy to 
follow the line of least resistance, and to be 
busy or dreary, as circumstances dictate. 

The happiest lot of all is to have enough 
definite duties to take off the humours of the 
mind, and enough energy to use leisure profit- 
ably — if one is as }>Iartha, to resolve to sit still 
and listen to the blessed talk; and if one is as 
Mary, to be ready to lend a hand to wash the 
plates. As Ruskin once wrote in one of those 
large and true summaries of principle which fell 
so easily from his hand : " Life without industry 



Experience 409 

is guilt; and industry without art [by which he 
meant the disinterested love of beautiful and 
noble things] is brutality." That is the truth, 
make what excuses we may. 



RESIGNATION 

Some time ago I was sitting with a friend of 
mine, and the tallv drifted on to a friend of his, 
Anson by name, whom I jnst knew b}^ sight, and 
had met perhaps two or three times. Anson was 
a Tonng man, under thirty, and his wife had just 
died, after two years of married life, leaving him 
with a baby boy. The wife, whom I also just 
knew, was a perfectly delightful creature, warm- 
hearted, vivid, interested in many things, and of 
great personal beauty and charm. 

I said, I think, that I simply could not under- 
stand how a man could endure such a blow at 
all — how it would be possible to go on living after 
such a bereavement, missing so beloved a com- 
panion at every moment. '' It is not," I said, " as 
the common phrase goes, losing the half of one's 
life, for in a marriage like that it would seem to 
be the whole of life that is gone; I do not sup- 
pose that there was a thought he did not share 
with her, and hardly a waking moment when she 
was out of his thoughts." 

" That is so," said my friend. " It was just 
one of those absolutely perfect marriages; and 
410 



Resignation 411 

yet he is bearing his loss with astonishing patience 
and resignation. He is simply wonderful! " 

** Ah I ■' I said, ''' I do not really like that word 
in that connection. I don't know poor Anson 
well enough to say ; but when the word ' won- 
derful ' is used, It seems to me to imply a dan- 
gerous exaltation of spirit, which is followed by 
a terrible reaction ; or else — well, I hardly like to 
say it, because it seems cynical, but it is not — 
but T suspect such people of not caring as much 
as it would be natural to imagine — of having 
consolations in fact. I know an elderly lady 
whose husband died after an illness of some 
months. They were a very devoted pair, I had 
always thought. She was a woman who had 
always subordinated her life to his; and he, 
though a very affectionate man, was an exacting 
one too. Well, she bore it ^ wonderfully,' and 
then it turned out that when his illness was pro- 
nounced hopeless she had quietly, without saying 
anything about it, bought a house in Florence; 
she went off there after his death, and I don't 
honestly think she suffered very much. I do not 
mean for an instant that she did not regret him, 
or that she would not have done anything to have 
saved him or to have got him back; the process 
was wholly unconscious ; but I really believe that 
she had suffered all her life without knowing it 
from a pent-up individuality, and from having no 
life of her own, and this, I think, came to her 
assistance; the interest of being able to lay out 



412 Along the Road 

her life upon her own lines did distract and sus- 
tain her. Of course, she may have suffered, but 
she gave little sign of it." 

" I think that is quite possible," said my friend. 
'' A great loss does brace peojde to an effort ; and 
there is no doubt that effort is enjoyable. But I 
will show you a letter which Anson wrote me, in 
reply to a letter of my own, and then you can 
judge." 

He took a letter from a drawer, and gave it 
me. It certainly was a beautiful letter in one 
sense. The writer said that the light of his life 
had gone out, but that he was going to live ^' in 
all things even as if she were by." That he was 
grateful for the priceless gift of her love and 
companionship, and looked forward with a cer- 
tain hope to reunion, and that he knew that she 
would have been wholly brave herself if she had 
lost him, and that he was going to live as she 
Avould have wished him to live. It was a long 
letter, and it breathed from end to end the same 
hopeful and tranquil spirit. I read it twice 
through, and sat in silence. 

" Well," said my friend at last, " what do you 
think of it?" ^' I don't know what to think," I 
said at last, " but I will speak quite frankly; and 
remember, I don't know Anson, so it is all guess- 
work. It may, I think, be written in a mood of 
intense but unconscious excitement. A man may 
feel to himself ' That is how I ought to think, 
and that is how I will try to think ' — and if this 



I 



Resignation 413 

is so, I should be afraid of a terrible breakdown 
later. Of course, there is no pretence about it 
— I don't mean that! But it may be the kind 
of rapture which comes of pain, and that is a 
dangerous rapture. I had far rather think it is 
that. But what I really miss in it is the human 
cri clu canir. The man who wrote this had, so 
to speak, all his wits about him. He is not, for 
some reason or other, in an agony. He is sub- 
lime and uplifted. I feel that I had rather know 
that he was utterl}- crushed by his loss, that he 
could see no one, do nothing. I don't think that 
any human loye ought to be able to look so far 
ahead at such a moment. I haye seen a man 
before now in hopeless grief. It was a friend of 
mine who had lost his only son, a boy of extraor- 
dinary promise, who was simply the apple of his 
eye. Well, he was very courageous, too ; he went 
on with his work, he was tenderly courteous and 
considerate, but he could not speak of his grief; 
he hardly ate or slept, and he had a perfectly 
heart-breaking smile on his face, which gaye me 
the feeling of chords strained to the bursting 
point, as though a touch would snap them. Now, 
I don't feel as if this letter came out of a mood 
like that, and though again and again we find 
that people do behave in a desperate crisis with 
more courage than would have been expected, yet 
T can't quite sympathise with the exalted view. 
It seems to me to shirk or miss the meaning of 
grief. T had rather almost that he went mad, or 



414 Along the Road 

liad au illness, or moped, or did something human 
and natural. I feel that the wa}^ he is behaving 
is the way in which people behave in plays or 
in books, when the sorrow is not really there, 
but only the imagined sorrow. I think that a 
man may win his way to a heavenly patience and 
acquiescence, but it is almost ghastly that he 
should find it at once in fullest measure. How 
can a man, the whole structure of whose life and 
love has suddenly crumbled about him, look 
through it all in that serene way? I don't think 
that people at such a time ought to act a part, 
however fine. It seems to me as if they were more 
conscious of the impressive effect of their part, 
than of the loss itself. I do not think I should 
feel thus if a man lost his fortune or his position 
or even his health. Those are all calamities which 
ought to be borne philosophically, and where one 
respects and admires a man for being able to 
smile and begin again. In Sir Walter Scott's 
Diary there is nothing so wonderful as the way 
in which he records that the loss of his wealth 
really did not affect him as much as he had ex- 
pected, and that it was a relief to him when 
everyone knew the facts. But when it comes to 
losing the closest, best, and sweetest of human 
relationships, all the words and glances and em- 
braces that are so much in themselves, and stand 
for so much more, all the interchange of thoughts 
and hopes and fears and wonders — when all this 
is suddenly swept away into silence and dark 



Resignation 415 

ness, the misery, the pathos, the waste, the horror 
of it must be unendurable; and faith itself is a 
thing that must be won; it cannot be drunk like 
a healing draught. One does not want peoi)le 
to be able to forget, but to triumph over 
remembrance." 

" Yes," said m^^ friend very gravely, " I think 
that is all quite true. But Anson is not a self- 
conscious man at all. He is perfectly frank and 
simple. He is writing in this letter not platitudes, 
but experience — I am sure of that. Something 
— some flash of hope, some certainty, has come 
in between him and his sorrow; and he is not 
thinking of himself at all. Is it possible, do you 
suppose — I do not want to speak fancifully or 
transcendentally — that he may be sustained by 
her conscious thought? If it were really true 
that she, out of the body, seeing the truth and 
the significance of loss could put her spirit in 
touch with his, and make him feel that love were 
not over, and that separation were not disunion, 
would that explain it? I know it is all a mys- 
tery, but surely we must all feel that we are 
visited by thoughts and hopes from time to time 
that are not of our own making — that are sent 
to us? I could not, if 1 would, believe that the 
world is so sharply cut off from what lies behind 
the world, from all that has gone before and all 
that comes after. I do not doubt that Anson will 
have to pass through dark hours, and learn, for 
some reason which I cannot comprehend, that we 



4i6 Along the Road 

cannot live life on our own terms, but must give 
up, not only the base and evil things which we 
desire, but the pure, sweet, and beautiful things 
which we recognise. I can't argue about these 
things — I can't prove them; but such a hope as 
that which I have indicated does not seem to me 
either unnatural or irrational. I cannot analyse 
or state or prove the worth and energy of love. 
I only know that I see in it a perfectly inex- 
plicable force, which makes men rise above them- 
selves and perform the impossible; and I cannot 
believe that that depends upon its being expressed 
in a human form, or that it ends with death." 

" Yes," I said, " you are right and I am wrong. 
I was speaking blindly and petulantly, from the 
point of view of a silly child whose toy is broken, 
and whose holiday is spoilt by rain. Instead of 
doubting the larger force, when we see it, be- 
cause we have not ourselves experienced it, we 
ought to wait and wonder and hope. I will try 
to think differently about it all. What I said 
amounted to this — ' I cannot believe unless I 
see ' ; and what the world — or something above 
the world — is telling us every day and hour of 
our lives is simply this — that we cannot see unless 
we believe." 



THE WIND 

At the old house where I was lately living, my 
window looked out on to an ancient terraced 
bowling-green, along one side of which skirts an 
avenue of big Scotch firs. On summer evenings, 
when the breeze blows out of the west, they 
whisper together softly like a falling weir; but 
the other night a gale sprang up, and when I 
awoke at some dark hour of the dawn, they roared 
like wide-flung breakers, while the wind volleyed 
suddenly in the gables and chimney-stacks, and 
the oaken door of my room creaked and strained. 
Some people find that an eerie sound; and I con- 
fess that a fitful wind, wailing desolately round 
the roofs of the house, gives the sense of a home- 
less wanderer, hurried onwards on some unwill- 
ing errand, and crying out sadly at the thought 
of people sleeping securely in quiet rooms, and 
waking to sheltered life and pleasant cares. Last 
night, and all day long, the wind has something 
boisterous and triumphant about it, as if it were 
bound upon some urgent business, and loved to 
sweep over bare woodlands and healthy hill-tops, 
to dive into deep valleys, set the quiet lake aswirl, 
27 417 



41 8 Along the Road 

and beud the sedges all one way. It seemed im- 
possible not to attribute to it a life and a con- 
sciousness, as of some great presence flying all 
abroad, and rejoicing in its might. 

I remember being brought very close to the 
secret of the wind one Easter-tide, when I was 
staying at a little village called Boot in the Esk- 
dale valley in Cumberland, a lonely little place 
between Scafell and the sea. We struck out one 
day over the great moorland to the Xorth, to- 
wards Wast Water. There was a great steady 
wind against us; we drew near at last to what 
appeared to be the top, and far beyond it we 
could see low-lying moors and woods, and deso- 
late hills behind. The wind stoj^ped quite sud- 
denly — or at least we came out of it into a space 
of silent air, with, if anything, a little gentle 
breeze behind us, instead of in our faces. Just 
ahead now were some ragged-looking rocks ; from 
them came a sound I have never heard again, a 
sort of shrill humming sound. We were puzzled 
by the cessation of the wind, and went to the 
edge. 

We found ourselves at the top of the great 
Wast Water screes, those black, furrowed preci- 
pices of rock which overhang the lower end of 
the lake. The reason why the wind had seemed 
to drop was simply this. It was blowing a raging 
gale on the clifr'-front, and the current of air was 
hurled up aloft, right over our heads, leaving a 
quiet region with a back-draught of wind. It 



The Wind 419 

was like being behiud a waterfall turned upside 
down. But the strangest thing followed. We 
got to the edge, so that we could look down the 
steeply-channelled front, with the dark lake be- 
low; and here the wind came up with such terrific 
force that one could lean out against it. It 
rushed up like an irresistible jelly, and a bit of 
paper that we held was hurled a hundred feet 
up above us. 

I wish that, when I was at school, some of 
these wonderful processes of air and light, of 
cold and heat, had been explained to me. We 
had some dreary science classes, when we did 
things like hydrostatics, and worked out the 
weight of columns of water; but it never seemed 
to have any reference to the things we were see- 
ing every day. I never realised then that a gale 
only means that somewhere and somehow a great 
mass of air is removed, and that a wind is nothing 
more than a general rush of air from all sides 
to fill the gap. I thought of w^inds as just irre- 
sponsible rushes of air ; and the Latin personifica- 
tion of them, Boreas and Zephyrus, and the rest, 
gave it all a freakish, fairylike flavour, which was 
pretty enough, but nothing more; and then, too, 
tliere were the old pictures, with furious, full- 
cheeked faces, like the heads of middle-aged 
cherubs, spouting storm on ships which leant 
sideways over a steeply-curdled sea. I cannot 
help feeling now that the beginning of all know- 
ledge ought to be the picture of our little whirl- 



420 Along the Road 

iug globe, warmed by the fii-e of tlie sun, with 
all its seas and continents, its winds and frosts. 
One began at the other end too much, at the 
nndne ])rominence of man; not thinking of man 
as a link in a chain, a creatnre who, by his won- 
derful devices, fights a better battle, and gets 
more out of the earth than other creatures; but 
rather as if all were nicely and neatly prepared 
for him, just to slip complacently upon the scene. 
One ought to learn to think of man as strangely 
and wonderfully permitted to be here, among all 
these mighty forces and mysterious powers, not 
as the visible lord of creation, and with every- 
thing meant to minister to him. Tt is a mistake, 
I believe, because it means that so much has to 
be unlearned, if one is not to shirk the great 
problem of life and destiny; much of our discon- 
tent and cowardice comes, I think, from our be- 
ginning by thinking that we have a right to have 
things arranged for our convenience and comfort, 
instead of its being a battle, where we have to 
win what peace we can! 

But I have travelled far away in thought from 
the gale that roars in the pine-boughs outside my 
window, as I sit with my quiet candles burning, 
book on knee, and pencil in hand. There is a 
delicious story of George MacDonald^s, which I 
think is called At the Back of the Not'th Wind. 
I have not read it for years, but it used to give 
me a delicious thrill. It was about a little boy, 
I believe, who slept in a bed in a boarded stable- 



The Wind 421 

loft, and who was annoyed by the wind blowing 
through a hole in the boards near his head. He 
stopped it up with a cork, I remember, and when 
he w^as in bed the cork was blown out with a 
bounce, and next minute there was a beautiful 
creature by him, a fairy all covered with rippling 
tresses of hair. She carried him with her over 
liill and dale, riding soft and warm, and night 
after night these airy pilgrimages went on, w^hile 
she taught him how everything in the world was 
bound together by love and care. Well, that is 
a different way of apprehending the secret of the 
wind, apart from barometrical depressions; and 
it has its merits! The point, after all, is some- 
how or other to feel the wonder and largeness of 
it all, and the sense of something which is in- 
finitely strong and kind behind our little, restless 
lives. One does not want to obscure that, but 
to feed it. One wants men to learn on the one 
hand how small a part of the huge mystery they 
are, and on the other to feel the glory and wonder 
of being still a part of it ; and so to advance, not 
complacently and foolishly, as though we knew 
all they needed to know, and had nothing to do 
but to make ourselves as comfortable as possible ; 
but rather as humble learners of a prodigious 
secret, beautiful beyond love and hope, of which 
we hardly know the millionth part; a secret in 
w^hich everything has its sure and certain place, 
from the continent that stretches from pole to 
pole to the smallest atom of air that hurries on 



422 Along the Road 

its viewless race; all iiidesi nu- tible alike, and the 
human spirit the most immortal of all. 

That is what the wind says to me to-night, as 
it leaps and rushes from hill to hill, surely per- 
forming its work, whatever that work may be. I 
fly with it in thought over the silent homesteads 
and the grassy downs; above the roofs of the 
great city, with all its twinkling lights and 
streaming smoke; over moorland and mountain, 
and out upon the sea again, to the fields of 
Northern ice, where its footsteps are not known. 



THE USE OF POETRY 

Lord Tennyson once went to stay with Dean 
Bradley, when the latter was Headmaster of 
Marlborough, and said to him one evening, over 
a pipe, that he envied Bradley with all his heart 
his life of hard, useful, honourable work. It is 
not recorded what Bradley — who, by the way, 
detested tobacco with all his heart — said in reply, 
but he no doubt let fall one of those courteous 
and pithy epigrams which came so often from 
his lips. But it is interesting to find that a man 
like Tennyson, with such a vocation and such a 
mission, was assailed by doubts as to the use of 
it all. It was not as though Tennyson waited for 
fits of inspiration, and dawdled in between. He 
worked at poetry as another man might work 
at accounts, diligently and faithfully. But, of 
course, a man of high creative genius, with the 
finest artistic work in hand, cannot possibly 
work all day and day after day at poetry. There 
must be interposed long spaces of quiet reflection 
and mental recreation. The writing of poetry is 
very destructive of brain tissue, and it cannot be 
done in a dull or weary frame of mind. Milton 
423 



424 Along the Road 

wrote about forty lines a day of Paradise Lost, 
composing in his bead, in bed in the morning, 
dictating and compressing them later in the day. 
Few i)oets would share the breezy opinion of 
William Morris, who said, " That talk of inspira- 
tion is all stuff! If a man cannot compose an 
epic poem in his head when he is weaving tapestry, 
he will do no good, and had better shut up I " 
But then Morris's Earthly Paradise is, after all, a 
sort of woven tapestry, and is a very different sort 
of work from Paradise Lost or In Meinoriam. 
Morris, on one occasion, wrote eight hundred lines 
in a single day, and probably, as they say, estab- 
lished a record. 

Of course, Tennyson was a man of very melan- 
choly moods, and no doubt the sight of a busy 
and happy place like Marlborough, humming like 
a hive of bees, and governed as equably and peace- 
ably as Bradley governed it, did make him feel 
that whatever was the value of any literary work, 
it could not have the same unquestionable and 
indubitable beneficence and usefulness as the 
work of a schoolmaster, with its close hold on 
human life, the momentousness of its effects upon 
character, and its far-reaching and germinating 
influence. 

The work of the poet is, after all, of a secret 
kind ; all the compliments of enthusiastic readers, 
all the laudation of reviewers, all the honours 
which the world heaps upon the head of the divine 
singer, cannot bring home to him the silent 



The Use of Poetry 425 

ecstasies of ]oj and hope which quicken the souls 
of thousands of eager readers and disciples. The 
poet is a shepherd who can neither see nor hear 
his flock; and in the case of Tennyson, who felt 
his responsibility deeply, and never lost sight of 
the fact that his work had for its end and aim 
the clarifying of human vision and the nurture 
of high hopes and pure ideals, there must have 
been many hours in which he must have asked 
himself what it was all worth! He could not see 
the regeneration which he strove to bring about. 
Just as Ruskin felt, with an acute sense of failure 
and despondency, that the public loved his pretty 
phrases and did not care twopence about his 
schemes for the bettering of humanity, so Tenny- 
son, as his later poems show, thought that the 
world was getting more pleasure-loving, more 
heedless, more low-minded year by year, and must 
have wondered, with a bitter sense of regret, 
whether he was, after all, more than a mere maker 
of word-melodies and harmonious cadences, which 
touched and pleased the ear but did not feed the 
heart. 

There is a well-known Greek legend, how the 
citizens of Sparta, after a series of disasters, 
applied to Athens for a leader; the Athenians 
sent them, to their disgust, a little lame school- 
master called Tyrtseus; they were wise enough 
not to reject the distasteful advice, and found that 
the contemptible creature was a great lyric poet, 
whose martial odes and war-songs put such heart 



426 Along the Road 

into their soldiers that they marched to victory 
once more. The legend, it may be feared, ema- 
nated from the brain of a literary man rather 
than from the full heart of a brigadier-general I 
The fragments of Tyrtseus do not display any 
very stimulating quality; but the motive of the 
story is a true one, namely, that vigorous and 
patriotic life is after all a lyrical soit of busi- 
ness, and that without imagination and fervour 
a nation is in danger of living on a low level, of 
making money, perhaps, and amassing comforts, 
but not enriching the blood of the world, or 
quickening the hopes of the future. 

The poet, then, must content himself w4th his 
sweet and noble music, and must not expect 
either material reward, or the sort of recognition 
that comes to the successful banker or the vic- 
torious general. Yet even from the warlike point 
of view, the fact that such a poem as The Eappij 
Warrior could appeal to and thrill countless 
hearts in generation after generation, serves at 
least to show that there is a romantic force in 
the background of a nation, which stands for 
something even in an era of commercial competi- 
tion. Even Tennyson at Marlborough might have 
taken heart at the thought that all the miniature 
citizens of that well-ordered state were still, as 
a part of their daily duty, reading Virgil — the 
Roman Gospel, as it has been called. That, at 
least, may serve to indicate the marvellous vitality 
of beauty and noble thought, and prove, if proof 



The Use of Poetry 427 

were needed, that man does not live by bread 
alone, bnt by every word proceeding from the 
month of God. In these days when we are so 
unreasonably afraid of German influence, the 
dano:er, if it exists at all, lies in the fact that the 
Germans are not given over to commercial enter- 
prise alone, bnt have a romantic passion for 
artistic things, poetry and music, which are the 
sign if not the cause of the imaginative and ad- 
venturous spirit which makes a race patriotic and 
ambitious. It is the dream of victory and su- 
premacy which makes a nation formidable, not its 
business habits or its mercantile transactions. 

In one of Swinburne's finest lyrics, in Atalanta 
in CalydoUy he speaks of the nightingale, and how 
she " feeds the heart of the night with fire." It 
is that which the poet can claim and hope to 
do. The nightingale herself, if she could be taken 
in hand by a strict political economist, and if she 
could be endowed with some of the common sense 
which our age so prudently values, might be con- 
vinced that she was a foolish creature, keeping 
absurdly late hours, and expending a most un- 
reasonable amount of energy on sounds which 
could be equally well produced by a penny 
whistle. But if an individual or a nation gets 
into a material frame of mind, there are disasters 
ahead. The man and the nation may live for a 
while a A^ery comfortable and well-ordered life, 
do excellent work, and enjoy a well-earned dinner 
at the end of the day. But it is not that spirit 



428 Along the Road 

which makes a nation, or keeps it strong. What 
is really the hopeful sign about a race is that it 
enjoys doing fine, unreasonable, heroic things, not 
unattended by plenty of risk and discomfort, 
which are indeed considerable elements in the 
fun. Schoolmaster and poet alike do their best 
work if they can inspire and stimulate that sort 
of spirit; and if at the same time they can show 
that activity is best enjoyed, if it is chivalrous 
and tender-hearted as well, and that it is on the 
wrong lines if it consists in boisterous and in- 
considerate merriment, and amuses itself at the 
expense of the weak and frail. The hooliganism 
of the day is a hoi)eful sign, because it means an 
overflow of high spirits ; and what we have to do 
is to turn those high spirits into the right chan- 
nels, not to endeavour to suppress and eliminate 
them altogether. The value of Tennyson's most 
popular work is that it upholds the knightly ideal, 
with plenty of hard blows, and splintered spears, 
side by side with a generous and compassionate 
spirit. It is, I think, a sign that some change 
is passing gradually over our national tempera- 
ment, that the spirit of the time is somehow alien 
to poetry- — that great poets are non-existent, and 
that the reading public turns away from poetry. 
But I think that the imaginative temper of the 
time is fed by romances; and so far from think- 
ing it a sign of decadence and mental decay that 
such a cataract of novels pours from the press, I 
believe it to be a sign of the existence of a fresh 



The Use of Poetry 429 

and childlike spirit, that wants to be told stories, 
and likes to lose itself in the thought of other 
liv^es and exciting adventures. I believe it shows 
tliat we have still plenty of freshness and zest 
in the race, and T should not in the least welcome 
it as a sign of grace if the taste for novels were 
to be succeeded by a taste for handbooks of 
political economy and manuals of bookkeeping. 
Of course, one wishes people to be serious and 
sensible, but I cannot say that I wish them to 
be dull and prudish. I believe myself that in 
many ways our own age resembles the Elizabethan 
age, and that there is an abundance of the adven- 
turous spirit abroad. I do not at all wish to 
see Englishmen prepared to work twelve hours a 
day on low wages, and not to need any sort of 
amusement. Such a time as the present has its 
evils, no doubt, but a nation is in a far more 
hopeful condition when it has plenty of high 
spirits that need curbing, than when it is sunk 
in apathetic diligence. And the use of poetry in 
the best and widest sense is to keep alive that 
eager and generous temper, which makes a nation 
into a race of kings instead of a race of slaves. 



WAR 

I SAW quoted the other day, in a review, some bits 
of Mr. Newbolt's poetry, which lay like flowers or 
crystals on the page. Mr. Newbolt is a true lyrical 
poet, always and invariably beautiful and accom- 
plished and melodious; and a great deal more 
than that! There is a lyric on a stream, which 
is one of the sweetest and purest pieces of word- 
music I know, like the liquid discourse of a flute, 
that goes and returns upon itself. And he is a 
master, too, of a very different kind of music, 
which stirs the heart and sets the blood dancing, 
as though a trumpet uttered with all its might 
a great fanfare. The test to me of a fine lyric 
is when it sends a physical shiver down the back, 
and fills the eyes with sudden tears; and this is 
what Drake's Drum does. That refrain of ^^ Cap- 
tain, art tha sleepin' there below? " is a stroke of 
high genius. Mr. Newbolt and Mr. Kipling are 
pre-eminent among our poets for a certain fault- 
less emphasis of accent, in which every single 
syllable has its value, and which gives one the 
impression, which is the test of perfect art, that 
the writers are making the words do exactly as 
430 



War 431 

they are bid. It was in the train that I read 
the article, and I wished I had a volume of Mr. 
Newbolt's within reach, to gladden the heart, as 
all true poetry does, when one is in the happy 
mood. 

Then I read a fine grave poem called Clifton 
Chapel, addressed to a son, reminding him of 
what his father had thought and hoped at the 
old school, and what he, too, must try to think 
and hope. I read on till I came to the lines : 

" To honour, while you strike him down, 
The foe that comes with fearless eyes." 

I dropped the book and sat thinking. One does 
not want to be feeble-minded, nor what is called 
sentimental, but somehow it made me shudder. 
Ought one really to try to feel that? And if so, 
ought one not also to feel the opposite? — 

" To honour, while he strikes you down, 
The foe that comes with fearless eyes." 

Is not the essence of the triumphant thought in 
the poet's mind, after all, the fact that oneself 
should be victorious? One can afford, it would 
seem, to honour a foe, if one can be sure of lay- 
ing him low. But why touch the note at all? 
Is one bound to accept the fact that war is a 
noble thing in itself? Are we really right in 
thinking that combat is inseparable from the life 
of humanity? All depends, it seems to me, on 



432 Along the Road 

the motive which lies behind a war. In the line 
I have quoted it seems -to be taken for granted 
that the foe himself is a preux chevalier, a 
soldier of honour and courage, a noble and a 
gentle knight. If war is made for the sake of 
righting some horrible wrong, of setting free a 
country from cruel and barbarous misuse by 
tyrants and evil governors, then it is a thing to 
be proud of, if it leaves a legacy of peace. But 
what could be the motive of a contest such as 
is here indicated? Some aggression, some in- 
tention of conquest, some sort of aggrandisement, 
some sense of wounded honour, which implies a 
wrong done and sustained? Ought one really to 
desire, and to teach one's children to desire, to 
meet in fight some man of as high courage and 
honour as oneself, and to leave him, for all his 
hopes and energies, dead upon the field? Can 
one look upon that as a glorious fact, a thing 
to dwell upon with satisfaction in quiet moments, 
to remember how our adversary lay bleeding at 
our feet, to fire our sons with the wish to do 
likewise ? 

It seems to me a very strange thing that one 
should value so highly the priceless privilege of 
life, should feel so strongly the justice of doing 
a murderer to death, in a ghastly kind of 
pageant; and yet that one should be able to be- 
lieve that under different circumstances, of in- 
vasion or aggression, it is a splendid and heroic 
thing to dismiss a fellow-creature into darkness ! 



War 433 

It is easy enough for a poet to adorn his tale, 
as Tennyson did in Maud, with the thought of 
a nation, sunk in commercial materialism, being 
set all aglow by the pleasure of tearing invaders 
limb from limb. But it seems to me that war is, 
after all, but a barbarous and horrible convention, 
which in spite of all that Christianity and civilisa- 
tion can do, stands out a blood-stained and a 
cruel evil among our wiser and more temperate 
designs. To glorify war seems to me but the un- 
chaining and hounding on of the ferocious beast 
that lies below the surface in most of us. To 
condone it is like defending the institution of 
slavery on the ground that cruel treatment may 
develop a noble endurance in the downtrodden 
slave, like encouraging bullying in schools that 
the bullied may learn hardness and courage. 

I think that we ought to regard war as a 
horrible ultimate possibility. If a nation loses 
its head with greed and excitement, and invades 
a peaceful territory, then the invaded land must 
appeal to force and sternly repel the aggressor. 
But think of such wars as the Napoleonic wars ! 
If a murderer deserves the penalty of death and 
shame, if he is thought of as going into the 
presence of a wrathful God, with blood upon his 
hands, what of Napoleon himself, who poured a 
cataract of the best and strongest young lives 
of his own countrymen into the grave, not only 
with unconcern and indifference, but amid the 
applause and wonder of his own and succeeding 



434 Along the Road 

generations? And for what? To set his family 
upon an imperial throne, and to put France at 
the head of a European empire. There was not 
a thought of helping anyone or benefiting any- 
one. Just a thirst for what is called glory, a 
determination to let the world feel the weight 
of one's hand. Surely the one hope of the world 
is the hope of living life in peace and energy and 
security, in toil and virtue? To give oppor- 
tunities to all, to protect the weak, to restrain 
the cruel and selfish — that is the aim. And yet, 
if only murder be practised on a great enough 
scale, and under fixed rules of combat, it is to 
be regarded as a heroic thing! On the one side, 
one is to try to fight the ravages of disease and 
calamity, to think of life as a precious thing and 
a rich inheritance; and, on the other, one is to 
sacrifice the best young blood and the highest 
hopes of a nation, in a process which hampers 
and penalises the prosperity of the conquering 
nation as well as that of the conquered. Then 
there is all the ghastly waste of human toil in 
preparing armaments, all subtracted from the 
working power of the world. It is not as though 
war were the only disciplinary force at work 
among us. The conquest of Nature, the subduing 
of the forces of the world, the replenishing of the 
earth, can make and keep men strong and virile 
enough. 

I had an interview in the sad days of the Boer 
War with a widow who had given two sons to 



War 435 

the service of the country. They were young men 
of the finest promise — strong, kindly, fair-minded, 
honourable. One had died, after horrible sutfer- 
ing, of wounds received in action; one had died 
of enteric in a field-hospital. The mother was 
full of noble and unmurmuring resignation; but 
it made me shudder to i\\\uk that these two young 
men, who might have lived long and valued lives, 
the kindly fathers of strong children, should thus, 
and for such ends as these, have been lost to the 
earth. 

reo[)le used to feel the same approval about 
dnelling. If a man's honour was insulted, there 
was nothing for it but to fight, and the recipient 
of the insult might lose his life as easily as the 
insulter. The thing now seems too idiotic for 
words, and who can say that our courage has 
abated in consequence of the abolition of duelling? 

I think it is probable that in the days to come 
men will think with a bewildered compassion of 
the time when war was an accepted practice. 
They will say to themselves that it is incredible 
that men should ever have thought it a noble 
thing to let the brute passions loose. They will 
see that the gift of God is life and health and 
happy labour and joyful union; and that men 
should have thought it admirable to spill each 
other's blood for vainglory and for passion and 
for greed, will seem an inconceivable and an 
intolerable thing. 

It is not that I should wish to deter men from 



436 Along the Road 

risking their lives for a geuerous or a daring 
cause. I do not feel any indignation against 
explorers or aviators or mountain-climbers or 
mariners, for being willing to take their lives 
in their hands. That is a noble spirit enough. 
A man's life is his own; he must not take it out 
of cowardice or despair, but he may risk it for 
an achievement if he will. But to hold it glorious 
to risk it in the mere taking of other lives seems 
to me a brutal and a barbarous thing; and what 
makes it baser still is that ultimately, as a 
rule, it is a mere question of property which is 
involved. 

Suppose that we imagine two strong nations, 
suffering from a great pressure of over-popula- 
tion, in a large island, with no outlet. Emigra- 
tion must, for the sake of the argument, be 
considered impossible. The strange thing is that, 
with our present ideas about war, we imagine 
that if the two governments conferred together, 
and decided that they would each put to death 
all the weakly and tainted and broken lives, that 
would be thought a ghastly and revolting pro- 
cedure. And yet we should, on the whole, ap- 
prove of the two nations going to war, and 
sacrificing thousands of the best and most vigor- 
ous lives in the process, leaving untouched all the 
weakly and ineffective stock of the nations. That 
is a very bewildering thought, and I find it im- 
possible to disentangle it. 

What is almost as bewildering is to think of 



War 437 

the things that occurred iu the Boer War, when 
on a night before a battle, the two forces met in 
friendly good-humour beside their entrenchments, 
sang their songs, jested and laughed, and even 
l)assed refreshments across to each other on bayo- 
net points, all the time quite prepared on the 
next day to kill as many of the opposing force 
as they could. 

Does it not look as though we were under some 
strange and evil enchantment in the matter? We 
are trying, manj^ of us, to solve the constructive 
problem, w^e are trying to accommodate our dif- 
ferences, to educate, to civilise, to encourage 
labour and order and peace; and yet in the back 
of our minds lies the fixed determination that if 
a quarrel is provoked, we w^ill devastate as far as 
we can each other's homes and circles; and with 
this horrible fact before us, that a war skims, so 
to speak, the very cream of humanity, and sweeps 
away, not the intemperate and the feeble-minded 
and the invalided, but the lusty and cheerful and 
strong. 

The truth is that we do not yet live by reason, 
but by instinct. When our passions rise they 
carry us off our feet. But the misery is that 
those men who have the vision — the poets and 
the preachers and the prophets — are drawn away 
by the fury and the excitement and the intoxica- 
tion of the fight and the fray, into thinking and 
speaking of war as though it had something 
Divine and noble about it, instead of its being, 



438 Along the Road 

as it is, the boisterous passion of the animal 
within us, the instinct to kick and bite and tear, 
to see blood flow and limbs writhe, and to rejoice 
with demoniacal gusto in the shameful havoc that 
we have it in our power to do. 



ON MAKING FRIENDS 

Friendship is one of the cheapest and most 
accessible of pleasures ; it requires no outlay, and 
no very serious expenditure of time or trouble. 
It is quite easy to make friends, if one wants to ; 
and in the second place, just as poetry can be 
written while one is weaving tapestry, so friend- 
ships can be made, and the best friendships are 
often made, while one is doing something else. 
One can make friends while one works, travels, 
eats, walks. I am not now speaking of mere 
pleasant acquaintances, but the friendships where 
each friend feels a certain need for the other, 
the friendships where one desires to compare ideas 
and experiences, where it is a pleasure to agree, 
because it is so delightful to find that one's friend 
thinks the same as oneself, and an even greater 
pleasure to differ, because the contrast is so 
wonderful and interesting. Of course, one can- 
not hope to have an indefinite number of great 
friends. The laws of time and space intervene, 
because if one is always plunging into new friend- 
ships, it is difficult to keep up the old. And then, 
too, a certain touch of jealousy is apt to creep 
439 



440 Along the Road 

iu. There is surely no greater pleasure in the 
world than to feel that one is needed, welcomed, 
missed, and loved; and it is difficult to acquiesce, 
with perfect generosity and good-humour, if one 
feels that someone else is more valued and needed 
than oneself. But it is possible, fortunately, to 
reach a point of friendship with another when 
one knows that there can never be any suspicion 
or jealousy or misunderstanding again; and that 
even if one does not see the friend or hear from 
him, yet that one will find him exactly the same, 
and take up the old relation exactly where it was 
suspended. 

It is surely one of the best and simplest pleas- 
ures in the world, when one realises tliat there 
has sprung up, one does not know how or when, a 
sense of mutual interest and confidence and affec- 
tion between oneself and another. It betrays itself 
by a glance, a gesture, a word, and one becomes 
aware that there is a secret bond, which cannot 
exactly be defined or analysed, between oneself 
and another — " because it was me, because it was 
you," as the old French writer said. I am not 
now speaking of the further and more mysterious 
process which mortals call falling in love, because 
that is a wholly different emotion, which is com- 
plicated by fiery and agitating impulses; but 
what I mean is a tranquil and contented emo- 
tion, of which the basis is a certain trust. We 
inherit no doubt from our palaeolithic ancestors 
a distinct combativeness, a tendency to suspect 



On Making Friends 441 

strangers, to growl and bristle like a clog. This 
translates itself in modern life into a tendency 
to be on one's guard and not to give oneself away. 
l)nt friendship comes when one can feel : " Well, 
whatever happens, So-and-so is on my side. I 
can say what I think to him, and I shall not 
be misunderstood ; we may disagree, but it will be 
without hostility, and our criticisms will not be 
resented. If I am misrepresented by other people, 
he will be sure to stick up for me; if I want help 
and advice, he will give it me, and what a pleasure 
it will be if there is anything which I can do 
for him I '' 

Of course, when I said that the process of 
making friends is easy, T do not forget that it 
is much easier for some people than for others. 
I know two or three men, and they are very 
pathetic figures, who desire friendship above 
everything, and need it, too, and who yet find it 
extraordinarily difficult to make friends. They 
are formidable, or tactless; they say the right 
thing to the wrong person, or the wrong thing 
to the right person. They are brilliant when 
they ought to be simple, and voluble when they 
ought to be quiet. They make too much fuss 
about it, and friendship ought to come gradually 
and insensibly. One can't conquer people or take 
them by storm. One may get admiration by 
showing off, but one cannot get affection; and 
the worst of people who have a great desire to 
make friends is that it tends to make them wish 



442 Along the Road 

to show off, to dazzle, and attract. We English 
are curious people; we are intensely emotional 
and sentimental, though we are not always 
credited with it by foreigners; we are supposed 
to be haughty, insular, dull as our skies and 
treacherous as our climate. Perfidious Albion! 
The one thing we pride ourselves upon is our 
blunt and transparent honesty, and yet we are 
believed in Europe to be the most faithless of 
the nations. We say that the Englishman's word 
is as good as his bond ; and with this foreigners 
agree, because they believe that both are frauds; 
that our word is deceptive, and our bond is not 
worth the paper it is written on. Yet in our 
own friendships we are, I believe, reliable, faith- 
ful, slow to take offence, quick to make allowance, 
ready to forgive and able to forget. 

But though I am sure that English people have 
rather a genius for friendship, it is curious how 
often it is confined to our earlier years. School 
and college friendships sometimes last through 
life, and are often really romantic relations; but 
as we get older we mostly lose the power. We 
have made up our bundle of preferences, and it 
is tiresome to add to them. I have often thought 
how unnecessarily cautious people get in England 
as they grow older. I find myself often sitting 
next some one at dinner, and saying to myself: 
** I am sure I should like you and trust you, if 
only you would say what you really think, and 
not keep lurking behind a fence of conventional 



On Making Friends 443 

opinions. Why is it necessary for us to talk 
about things in which we neither of us feel the 
smallest interest? We have both of us experi- 
ences, views, ideas. Why cannot we put them 
into words? Why must we play this tiresome 
kind of lawn-tennis, you serving a statement, and 
T feebly returning it?" I sometimes think that 
this apparent want of frankness, this shrinking 
from reality Is what makes us seem to foreigners 
to be diplomatic when we are really only shy. 
Yet there are finer things said about friends and 
friendships in English poetry and prose than any- 
where else that I know of, which show one that 
whatever we may say or pretend to think about 
emotion, the thing is there, and glowing with a 
heart of fire. 

Well, then, suppose the process over, the fencing 
done, the conventional diplomacies put away, the 
friend made and trusted and loved, what do we 
expect to feel and to give and to receive? 

First of all, let me respectfully say, neither to 
tell our friend of his faults nor to be told of our 
own ! That may be set aside except in urgent 
necessity. It may be a sad and reluctant duty, 
once in a lifetime, to tell a friend of some fault 
of which he is unconscious, and which is really 
doing him harm. But as a rule we know our 
own faults better than anyone else! Still less 
do we expect a constant parade of sentiment, a 
waving of the banners and a blowing of the 
trumpets of emotion. We have done with all 



444 Along the Road 

tliat too, except, perhaps, in a happy instant, 
when we must express our gratitude and joy. 
What we expect and what we get is the test of 
all relationshij)s, wlien we can show our inmost 
mind without apology or fear; wlien there is no 
need to avoid this subject or that, but when we 
can talk plainly and without affectation of what 
interests, annises, pleases, vexes, distresses, moves 
us, without any thought of wanting to produce 
an effect, or to impress or win ; and we can listen, 
too, to our friend's talk without either patience 
or impatience. It is neither a sentimental busi- 
ness nor an intellectual business ; it is simply the 
recognition of the fact that here are two spirits 
strangel}- like, strangely unlike, bound on the 
same pilgrimage, without secrets from each other, 
only happy in companionship, and believing that 
it does not end here, or now, or anywhere. 

There is nothing finer or more beautiful in the 
world than a man or woman who can go through 
life thus, proffering to others that kind of faith 
and trust and fellowship, not for the sake of 
selfish convenience or to beguile a tiresome hour, 
but out of sweetness and kindness and goodwill 
and trustfulness. I have known some few such, 
and I consider it the great blessing of my life. 
They are as often as not wholly unconscious of 
their great gift, and they believe others to be as 
guileless, as frank, and as kindly as themselves, 
for the simple reason that their own goodness 
shines like the sun on all round them, making 



On Making Friends 445 

the coldest heart warm for a while. Of course, 
we caiiuot all be like that, because there comes 
into it the mysterious force called charm, which 
makes the word and the gesture and the smile 
of some people so attractive and so beautiful; 
but we can avoid the things that hold us back 
from others — the grim statement, the peremptory 
judgment, the cheap sneer, the suspicious caution ; 
if we cannot all be warm-hearted and generous, 
we need none of us be captious, irritable, prosy, 
censorious. " I can't make out why people don't 
like me," said a peevish and cynical man to the 
one friend he had on earth. It was no time for 
compliments, and the friend, with a smile, said 
''Can't you?" There was a silence, and then 
the other said, with a nod and a smile, " Yes, 
I can!" 



THE youngp:r generation 

There is nothing which has so completely altered 
in the course of the last fifty years, and altered, 
in my belief, so wholly and entirely for the better, 
as the method of bringing wy children. No doubt 
parents were always fond of their children, and 
proud of them for not very demonstrable reasons. 
But fifty years ago children were much more 
strictly handled, repressed, kept out of sight, and 
generally dragooned, than is at all the case now. 
They were paraded, of course, neatl}" brushed and 
washed and habited, on fit occasions — at luncheon, 
and perhaps before dinner; but they were ex- 
j)ected to hold their tongues, to eat what was 
})ut before them; their opinions were not asked, 
and if expressed, were firmly snubbed. They were 
left much more to themselves, and had to rule 
their own community with superficial decorum. 
The result of this was that, in the old books, chil- 
dren were represented as a species of charming 
hooligan. They always " got into mischief " if they 
could, and relapsed into a sort of savagery if 
they were not under control. But now the con- 
trast between, so to speak, the public and the 

446 



The Younger Generation 447 

private life of children is not nearly so much 
marked. They live much more with their elders, 
and being treated as reasonable members of so- 
ciety, they actually like, and, indeed, are rather 
dependent upon, their older friends, instead of 
being frankly bored by them. Of course, one 
always knew as a child that elder people, if they 
only ivould play, were the best of playmates. 
They were stronger, fairer, more inventive. But 
they often would not play. They were " busy,'* 
and a kind of dull grimness fell upon them 
suddenly, and for no apparent reason. 

But now children are apt to pervade a house, 
to take their elders captive, to demand co-opera- 
tion and sympathy. The day is much more laid 
out with reference to them, and they have a social 
part to play. It is just the same at private 
schools. I was myself at a big private school 
of the hardier sort. The tone was wholesome 
and kindly; but we were left very much to our- 
selves, and had to make our own arrangements. 
If we were simply too ill to get along, we went 
reluctantly to the matron. But now the assistant- 
masters play with the boys, talk to them, see 
that they change their boots, mother them from 
morning to night. 

The old ideal was a Spartan one; the design 
was to get rid of softness, at the expense, no 
doubt, of the frail and timid and delicate, to 
make boys independent by leaving them to find 
out what their duties were, and punishing them 



448 Along the Road 

severely if they were unbusinesslike. Boys cer- 
tainly grew older and harder more quickly, while 
the gentler natures had very often rather a bad 
time of it. 

Again, look at the difference in the position of 
the governess. The typical old-fashioned govern- 
ess of the story-book was shy, plain, and prim. 
Tf her charges were unruly, she had to fight as 
with beasts at Ephesus. She came to dinner if 
it was convenient, the servants were rude to her, 
the mistress of the house was kind but per- 
emptory. Now, on the contrary, one sees a per- 
fectly-appointed and self-possessed young lady, 
the social equal of her employers, and generally 
much better educated. She can play games, she 
can make jokes, and if she gets on well with the 
children, she ends by ruling the whole household. 
Woe betide the servant who is rude to her; and 
as for the children, they adore her, and look upon 
her as a sort of fairy godmother, standing be- 
tween them and the wrath of the powers that 
be. 

The change in the whole situation was, of 
course, a hazardous experiment; but it came by 
nature, it was not deliberately introduced. It 
was hardly possible to say for certain, until 
lately, whether the new regime was going to be 
a success. Was it going to end in making the 
children effeminate, selfish, peevish, helpless, in- 
considerate? Was it all a sign of decadence and 
sentimentality? 



The Younger Generation 449 

It is possible now to answer these questions 
with a decided negative. The results have been, 
so far as one can see, wholly good. The twenty 
years of my own professional life as a school- 
master constituted a crucial period. The boys 
who came to Eton at that date were boys edu- 
cated on the new plan. I have not the smallest 
doubt that they were incomparably nicer, kinder, 
more humane, more considerate, more reasonable, 
and not in the least less active, or spirited, or 
conscientious, than the boys of my own school- 
days. Of course, they were not perfect. There 
is a good deal of the native savage about the 
growing boy. He is self-absorbed, messy, greedy, 
unreflective, conventional. But he comes to a 
public school expecting to find other boys kindly 
and friendly; he no longer looks upon the au- 
thorities as his natural enemies. He anticipates 
that even if they are strict and quick-tempered, 
they will, probably, take a human interest in him, 
and will not be cruel or malicious. He finds the 
path smoothed for him from the outset. Bully- 
ing has practically disappeared, corporal punish- 
ment is fast becoming extinct, work that a boy 
cannot understand is explained to him. His rea- 
sons are no longer treated as excuses. His rights 
in the matter of exercise are safeguarded. His 
health is looked after rationally. There is plenty 
of discipline; but the whole life is healthier, 
happier, more humane; and there is far less of 
the vague sense of alarm, of impending cata- 
29 



450 Along the Road 

strophe in the background, than used to be the 
case even in my own schooldays. 

I cannot see any point upon which the lauda- 
tor temporis acti can lay his finger and say that 
things have gone downhill. Of course, there are 
plenty of tiresome and stupid pessimists about, 
who utter absurd grumbles and diatribes about 
the luxury and effeminacy of the younger genera- 
tion; but with every wish to encourage frank 
criticism and to accept definite evidence, I can- 
not see the smallest sign of deterioration. When 
our boys had to go out and fight in the Boer 
War, they went and roughed it with a keenness, 
a gaiety, and a courage which was patent and 
undeniable. And now that I have an opportunity 
of observing the younger generation up at the 
University, it seems to me that the net gain is 
simply incontestable. I think that undergradu- 
ates seem in some ways younger than they 
were, and there is a conventional respect for 
athletics which is tiresome, but which stands for 
a w^holesome love of physical activity and the open 
air which I should be sorry to see diminished. 

The other day an old friend of mine came to 
stay at Cambridge; his name was put down at 
the Union, and he spent a good deal of time 
there. He said to me that he had two criticisms 
to make — that the young men were very badly 
dressed, and that they were extraordinarily polite 
and kind to him. "Why," he said, "if I want 
a book or a paper, or if I wish to be shown my 



The Younger Generation 451 

way about, any young man whom I ask wants to 
go and fetch the book or paper for me, or insists 
on personally conducting me round. I am sure," 
he added, " that in my time we should have con- 
sidered an elderly clergyman, who infested the 
Union, as a bore, and we should have been very 
short with him." 

As far as the bad dressing goes, I fear I am 
wholly on the side of the undergraduate. I 
agree with Solon, who legislated against expen- 
sive dress, saying that rich and poor ought all 
to be dressed alike. The present tradition of 
dress is simple, comfortable, healthy, and cheap; 
and the undergraduate is quite capable of turn- 
ing out very smart upon a state occasion. As 
for his increased courtesy and kindness, it is 
perfectly true, and an immense improvement upon 
the rougher and more independent manners of 
my own day. 

The point is, I think, to bring up children to 
be happy. Of course, they must be obedient, and 
conscientious. But children only want a motive, 
and there is far more potent a force at work if 
they learn to do their duty for the sake of those 
whom they love, and because they love them, than 
because of an abstract and unintelligible code of 
rules. The aim is to get them somehow habitu- 
ated to right conduct, and the simpler and 
more direct the motive the better. Then, too, one 
wants children to find the world a friendly and 
a kindly place, and to feel themselves welcome 



452 Along the Road 

in it. There are plenty of haid, sorrowful, and 
dreadful things waiting for them, which no one 
can escape. But we need not add to those terrors 
the terrors of harshness and unkindness at tlio 
outset. One does not want to make people stoical 
and cynical; one wants to make them brave and 
affectionate. The bravery that comes of affection 
is a far better thing than the stoicism which 
comes of cynicism. One of my own terrors as a 
child and schoolboy was the fear of some penalty 
falling on me out of the blue for some transgres- 
sion that I had not understood nor intended. 
This was not a fear of justice, but a fear of 
unprovoked calamity, and I cannot see that it 
did me any good or improved my outlook. One 
wants to encourage children to do what is right, 
not to frighten them into it. There is a reason- 
able fear of the consequences of ill-doing which 
is a very different thing from the inconsequent 
terror of undeserved affliction. 

I will go a step further, and say that the boys 
among my own pupils who turned out just what 
one would wish boys to be — manly, simple, keen, 
and kind — were boys of nice and wholesome dis- 
positions who had been rather spoilt at home. 
Of course, it is not safe to spoil children, because 
one cannot be sure that there is the nice dispo- 
sition behind ; but if a boy is right-minded and 
sensible, a little spoiling does him no harm. 
" Spoiling " is not the right word quite, but I 
can find no other — and it is exactly what the 



The Younger Generation 453 

gruff and grim critic would call spoiling. The 
sort of thing I mean is giving the children a 
good deal of simple pleasure, indulging them in 
reasonable ways, letting them choose, in a general 
way, what they will do to amuse themselves, what 
they will eat and wear; and letting them see quite 
jdainly that their parents love them, and desire 
their company, and want them to be happy. That 
concealment of affection which used to be con- 
sidered wholesome is a mistake. The result was, 
on the boys of whom I am speaking, that they 
in turn adored their parents, wanted to be with 
them, and learned to want them to be happy. 
And thus these boys got into the way of being 
considerate, kind to their brothers and sisters, 
and perfectly sure that they were not in the way, 
but that the world was peopled with affectionate 
and reasonable persons. The result with such 
boys was simply thus: that if one had to enforce 
discipline with them, and was content to explain 
the reason for it, they acquiesced willingly and 
graciously; while the wish not to distress or 
grieve their parents in any way was simply 
supreme. I am not pleading for a luxurious, 
easy-going, pleasure-loving kind of education at 
all. I think that there ought to be a very strict 
code of perfectly obvious discipline behind, but 
not mechanical discipline. For if children know 
that they are loved, they do obey orders, and 
obey them willingly; and a very little willing 
obedience takes a child a long way further along 



454 Along the Road 

the right road than any amount of rebellious 
obedience. 

Whether we like it or not, there is no going 
back; and I for one have no wish to go back. 
What we need in this, as in many other directions, 
is more frankness and sincerity. The old idea 
Avas that children were to be taught their place, 
and the result w^as that they w^ere not taught 
their place at all. They occu])ied, then as now, 
a foremost place in their parents' hearts and 
minds; and they were often kept deliberately 
ignorant of this, and led rather to sup])ose that 
they were troublesome little creatures, who were 
rather in the way than otherwise. It often hap- 
pened, later in life, that a boy found out, by 
falling into disgrace, the depth of unknown affec- 
tion that had surrounded him; if he had known 
it before, it would have been an additional mo- 
tive to do nothing that would cause pain and 
grief to those who loved him. 

I remember well hearing my father, late in his 
life, deplore the fact that he liad thought it right 
to be so strict a schoolmaster. " If I could have 
it all over again," he said, " I would try to drive 
less and to lead more. Driving," he added, " gets 
one quickly past the immediate obstacle, but that 
is not the point; the real aim ouglit to be to 
develop character, and that can only be done by 
leading." 



READING 

I SUPPOSE it is because writing books is known to 
be my trade that strangers whom I meet, often, 
out of courtesy and kindness of course, speak to 
me about books. And I suppose that it is from 
some lack of courtesy and kindness that I often 
find it so difficult to do my part, to make due 
responses to the friendly versicles. It is held by 
most people that anyone who reads books can 
talk about them, but as a matter of fact, though 
most of the people I know read books, very few 
indeed can talk about them. Books, pictures, 
music, scenery, and people are all difficult things 
to talk about, because they are not wholly definite 
and tangible things, but depend so enormously 
for their value upon something in the mind and 
heart of the persons who read, see, hear, and 
observe them. 

Just as certain chemicals will remain quiescent 
if they are mixed with one set of substances, but 
if they are mixed with another set they rise in 
foam and vapour, so a book requires to be mixed 
with something in the soul of the reader, before 
there is any motion or energy put forth. Even 

455 



456 Along the Road 

the people who feel a book cannot always talk 
about it. But at the least a book must be read 
with a certain critical apprehension to be worth 
anything, and not in obedience to a fashion, or 
a review, or a friend's recommendation. To read 
a book, in my own case, is always a sort of com- 
bat, in which I ask myself whether the author is 
going to overcome me, and persuade me, and con- 
vince me, or even vex me. And the whole point 
about a book is not whether it is brilliant, or 
well arranged, or well written, but whether it has 
a real life of its own. It need not necessarily 
be like life. The novels of Dickens are not in 
the least like life, but they have an overpowering 
life of their own. The difference between books — ■ 
I am speaking now mainly of fiction — is whether 
you say, " That could not have happened — that 
is untrue to life," or whether you say, " That is 
not at all like my experience of life, but it exists 
and lives." Many people are, I think, too defer- 
ential to books, and if books are well written 
and have a well-known name on the title-page, 
many readers will accept them as good and bow 
down before them. I could name authors, though 
I will not, who began by w^riting a good book, 
and made a name by it, who have never written 
anything else worth reading. Sometimes it is the 
same book again, with different names and places ; 
and sometimes it becomes a mere mechanical busi- 
ness, and the author does not pour his mind and 
heart into his books any more. I do not myself 



Reading 457 

think that it is of any use to read a book in a 
deferential spirit. The writer's business is to lay 
you flat if he can, to make you feel the active 
presence of forces and influences, to rouse, startle, 
interest, amuse, satisfy. 

I am sure that the advantages and benefits of 
reading are greatly exaggerated. It is an in- 
nocent way of passing time, of course, but the 
time that we pass is not worth comparing to the 
time that we use; and I am not sure that even 
wasting time may not be better than merely pass- 
ing it, because there is some spirit about that. 
Reading poor books may, of course, be strictly 
regarded by laborious people as a way of easing 
off a mental strain. I have a friend who works 
very hard, and who finds that if he works on 
until he goes to bed he cannot sleep. So he reads 
what he calls ^' garbage," a novel a night, and he 
finishes it generally within an hour; but that is 
mere unbending, like playing patience. 

But real reading, which is deliberately putting 
oneself in contact with another mind, ought to 
be lil^e concentrated talk. A writer is talking, 
and he is missing out all the half-formed and 
slipshod sentences, which make up so large a part 
of ordinary talk. He is doing his best ; and real 
reading cannot be pure recreation ; it must mean 
a certain amount of observing and judging. Our 
ancestors used to think that all well-conducted 
people should put in a certain amount of what 
was called solid reading, and there were plenty 



458 Along the Road 

of old-fashioned, serious bonseholds where novel- 
reading in the morning was thought to be dis- 
si|)ation. I think that this is out of date, and T 
am not sure that I wholly regret it, because I 
am not certain that reading is of any use unless 
you care about it. Solid reading was history, 
biography, science, theology, and classical litera- 
ture — and the odd thing was that Shakespeare 
was solid reading and Walter Scott was not. As 
to reading for the sake of general information, it 
all depends upon what use you are going to make 
of it. If you read in order that you may under- 
stand the development of modern problems, or, 
better still, because you care to know what people 
were like in times past, what they did and en- 
dured, and why they did it or endured it, it is 
an excellent occupation. But if you read because 
you like to stock your mind, like a warehouse, 
or because you like feeling superior, or being 
thought intellectual, then it is useless, or worse 
than useless. 

And of all fruitless reading, the reading of 
books about books is the worst, if you do not 
go on to read the books themselves. That is like 
reading the news of the Stock Exchange if you 
have no money, or reading Brad sh aw if you are 
confined permanently to your bed. I do not mean 
that I desire to make people read from the right 
motive or else not read at all, because one has 
no right to interfere with other people's ways 
and wishes. But I do not think it right that it 



Reading 459 

should be vaguely supposed that there is anything 
dignified or useful about mere reading, or that 
l)eople ought to be proud of doing it, any more 
than they are proud of eating and sleeping. 

The ground, too, is all cumbered with foolish 
maxims about reading. Bacon said that reading 
made a full man. That is true in a sense. I 
know some people who are unpleasantly full, 
bulging and distorted with knowledge undigested. 
But what Bacon meant was a well-stored, un- 
encumbered mind, which can reach down the 
knowledge it wants from the right shelf. Then, 
again, it is often said that writers have no bio- 
graphies but their own works — and that is pure 
nonsense. Statesmen and generals and men of 
science have often no biogi^aphies, because their 
work was done in the world, and has gone into 
the world. But writers are just the very people 
about whom it is worth reading, if one loves their 
books, because their biographies show what made 
them think as they did, and how they came to 
cast such a transfiguring light on ordinary things. 
Again, I have often heard serious men, especially 
schoolmasters, say that it is wrong to read maga- 
zines, because one gets only snippets of know- 
ledge; but that is not only what most people 
want, but exactly what they get out of bigger 
books with infinitely more trouble. I think that 
the miscellaneous reading in modern magazines, 
so full of all sorts of curious and interesting 
things, is the very way to open people's minds 



460 Along the Road 

and touch their imagination, and make them feci 
tliat tlie world is a very wide and exciting place. 

I do not wish to decry the real intellectual life. 
That is a very noble thing, lived at a high alti- 
tude and in rarified air, and from it flow many 
of the ideas and thoughts that make life worth 
living for the next generation. But for ordinary 
minds the thing is to think clearly about simple 
things, and feel generously and eagerly about life. 
A great deal of the trouble of the world is made 
by well-meaning, muddled people, men and women 
who tamely accept and preach traditions and con- 
ventions, and still more by stupid and tyi'annical 
people, who are unsympathetic and unimagina- 
tive, and bully those who do not agree with them. 
What one wants to encourage people to do is to 
live eagerly and hopefully in the thoughts of 
noble-minded men of genius — men, let us say, like 
Tennyson and Browning, Carlyle and Buskin, who 
lived gallant and enthusiastic lives, and saw the 
sunrise further off than duller natures. But it 
is useless to go to these great men only because 
it is the correct thing to do, and because one 
feels a fool if one does not know about Babbi 
Ben Ezra, or the Stones of Venice. Of course, 
one wants people to care about such things, but 
one does not want them to care for ugly reasons. 

There is nothing in which dishonesty or pre- 
tentiousness punishes itself so severely as it does 
with reading. It is like practising religion be- 
cause other people think better of you for doing 



Reading 461 

so. It is like keeping the manna too long, like 
ottering money for the fire of the Spirit. Instead 
of helping people to be wise and tolerant and 
generons, it makes them despise true feeling and 
beantifnl thought; because the aim of life is to 
meet it with a noble curiosity and a courageous 
frankness. It does not need an intellectual per- 
son to do that; I know some very simple people, 
who never open a book, who yet look life very 
straight in the face, mend what they can, help 
others along, and do their best to get rid of the 
ugly giants and beasts who infest the path of 
pilgrimage. 

And thus, as I say, reading can be, if it is done 
simply and instinctively, a very harmless thing; 
and if it is done eagerly and enthusiastically, it 
can be a very fine thing, like the listening to the 
talk of great persons — not overhearing it, but hav- 
ing it addressed deliberately to oneself; or it can 
be a very feeble and even pernicious thing, if it 
is done ungenerously and for ulterior motives; 
because the dangerous things of life are the things 
that make us self-satisfied and complacent, and 
give us the evil right of thinking contemptuously 
about others. But of course one ought to know 
something of the glory and beauty of the world 
about us, and not to be satisfied with our own 
little round of trivial cares and interests. There 
is a touching story of a man, travelling in South 
America, who met an aged Roman Catholic priest 
in a very out-of-the-way place. He entered into 



462 Along the Road 

talk with the old mau, who seemed unfit for 
rough travel, and asked him what he was doing. 
'' Oh, just seeing the world," said the priest, with 
a tired smile. The traveller said, " Is it not 
rather late in life to begin? " " Well, I will tell 
you how it is," said the old man. " I have lived 
and worked all my life in a very quiet little place. 
A year ago I had a bad illness, and knew that T 
should die. I was weary, and glad to go; and 
I am afraid I was proud of my long and simple 
service. While I was thinking thus, I saw 
someone was standing by me, a young man with 
a strange brightness on his face; and then I saw 
it was an angel. He said to me, ^ What do you 
expect?' I said: ^I am waiting upon God, and 
T hope that because I have served Him so long 
He will show me the glory of Paradise.' The 
angel did not smile, but looked at me rather 
sternly, and then said : ^ No ; you have taken so 
little trouble to see the glory of His world here 
that you must not expect that you will see the 
glory of that other place.' And then in a mo- 
ment he was gone, and all my pride was gone too. 
I got well from that moment; and then I gave 
uj) my work, and determined that I would spend 
the little money T had saved in trying to see 
something of the beauty of the world; and I am 
seeing it, and I find it beautiful beyond words." 

THE END 



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